Simple defrag question

[SkyBum]

I was talking to a friend yesterday and he mentioned that he has not defragged his PC in over 2 years (my god I feel sorry for that system...). Apparently, he can't be bothered to let it complete the task.

This got me wondering. If you click the stop button in the defrag window of windows XP midway through a defrag, is any defrag progess up to that point saved or discarded, i.e. would the end result be a partial defrag or none at all?

I googled this for half an hour or so with no clear answer, anybody here got one?

 

[QED]

The end result will be a partial defrag.

Otherwise, when you'd click cancel it would take several minutes or longer to move the file chunks back to their original position.

 

[BW86]

partial defrag


just tell him to defrag when he goes to sleep.

 

[networkman]

Yes, a partial defrag would be the result of stopping prematurely.

As the others have said, just leave the PC to do its defragging over night. Do turn off the screen saver and power saving modes though so that there aren't any items to halt the defrag process.

I'd also recommend clearing out cache and temp files too, so as to create less work for the defrag process.

 

[Atheus]

People need to be taught PC maintanance is like car maintainance - if you don't do it, the machine will become unreliable and eventually stop working. I get asked to go round to people's houses and 'fix their computer' and when I get there all it needs is a defrag, an antimalware sweep, and a run of CCleaner. Someone I know bought a nice laptop for close to nothing off a guy who thought it was broken in some way. Of course a windows reinstall fixed everything.