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how often do you defrag

post #1 of 33
2/13/05 at 11:30pm
Thread Starter 
how often do you defrag? I ran windows defrag and it did not say I needed one one, even after 6 months.
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post #2 of 33
2/13/05 at 11:49pm
At least once a month, at night. It doesn't hurt to do it, so why not?

Reformatting however, that's about once every 6 months
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post #3 of 33
2/13/05 at 11:59pm
About every five days. The Windows default defragger is OK, but a bit of a granny compared to Diskeeper:

www.executivesoftware.com

I find it a little hard to believe that Windows doesn't think you need a defrag. Even if you only power up once a day and browse the net for a half hour, or install new programs, you'd need a defrag. Files are never gonna be placed on the platter in an entirely organized manner.

Also try these links to threads within the forum. This is a popular subject, and it's covered pretty well. SEARCH is my favorite word :

http://notebookforums.com/showthread...ghlight=defrag

http://notebookforums.com/showthread...ghlight=defrag
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post #4 of 33
2/14/05 at 1:26am
Every 2 weeks, I do a disk cleanup (remove all those temp files), a little Ad-Aware/Spy-bot removal and a defrag.
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post #5 of 33
2/14/05 at 1:32am
Quote:
Originally Posted by abe98gt
how often do you defrag? I ran windows defrag and it did not say I needed one one, even after 6 months.
Since I have two hard drives installed in my D800, I regularly ghost from one drive to the other and then back again which leaves the destination partition fragment-free.
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post #6 of 33
2/14/05 at 1:38am
The speed you "lose" from fragmentation is negligible. I guess if you sleep better at night by running defrag, go ahead, but it's not going to do a lot for you. Back in the days of the FAT/FAT32 file system it had a greater impact, but with NTFS you don't get the fragmentation like before.
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post #7 of 33
2/14/05 at 1:42am
Quote:
Originally Posted by roshambo
The speed you "lose" from fragmentation is negligible. I guess if you sleep better at night by running defrag, go ahead, but it's not going to do a lot for you. Back in the days of the FAT/FAT32 file system it had a greater impact, but with NTFS you don't get the fragmentation like before.
http://www.ntfs.com/ntfs_optimization.htm

Not only MFT but also other files and directories can be fragmented when drive becomes full and you perform lots of copying and deleting actions with files. It also slows down system performance, so using standard Defragmentation Tools regularly is advisable when you perform a lot of copy/move/delete operations on the volume.
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post #8 of 33
2/14/05 at 2:47am
i always thought of it as trying to put less wear and tear on the read/write head then speed increase by defragmenting....at least for the last 4 or 5 years.
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post #9 of 33
2/14/05 at 3:30am
nightly
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post #10 of 33
2/14/05 at 3:34am
there is no wear and tear on the platter or the heads since they are never in contact. the hard drive manufacturers have said over and over again that there is no wear and tear involved with the heads and platters when defragging and using hard drives a lot. the point of defragging in the old days was to make contiguous blocks of data so that the heads did not have to move all over the platter trying to find chunks of data. this "thrashing" used to create a speed decrease.

i have a question though. why is it that with ntfs, defragging isnt so neccesary anymore?
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post #11 of 33
2/14/05 at 5:06am
it is not true. ntfs actually requires a crapload of defragging. so does the mac os x filesystem and every system at least i know of out there. i dont know about reiser 4 or journal filesystems. but in the case of macs, whenever any kind of update takes place or any kind of file manipulation happens, there is defragging on the fly so the hdd stays at its peak. i read it at www.osnews.com in one of the mac topics. pretty interesting. hence i have my diskeeper 9 set to defrag everytime i am away from my computer or the screen saver is on, stuff like that.
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post #12 of 33
2/14/05 at 8:48am
Defrag... I only defrag immediately after doing a complete re format, I don't defrag at all after that.

Having said that, I do a complete reformat every 3-4 weeks. (Just because I like doing it ok....)
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post #13 of 33
2/14/05 at 9:41am
I've also only defragmented once during the past 8 months, and formatted the pc as soon as i got it from dell....
how do you guys reformat so often? doesnt it take forever for you to load up windows/drivers/sp1 or sp2/programs etc??
I would like to format, but the thought of reinstalling everything gives me a headache....I dont know exactly what a "Ghost" is or how to "Image" a machine and how exactly it works so all u have to do is reimage it....any information on what exactly that is and how it works and what program to use for that would be appriciated

Edit: And whats a good defrag program other than the one provided by windows...freeware or shareware...

Thanks
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post #14 of 33
2/14/05 at 10:26am
I wish I had a dollar for every minute you guys waste running defrag.
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post #15 of 33
2/14/05 at 12:10pm
Why, you gonna pay us? Let's see, I defrag every 5 days for the last year, so you owe me $73.00. Doesn't seem like a whole lot of defragging when you put it dollar terms.
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post #16 of 33
2/14/05 at 5:31pm
defrag slows the boot down a bit but thats the only thing. once a week i run microsoft bootvis and voila my boot is back up to speed. its not a problem really. i would rather trade some boot time and have a zippy system. with defrag on, my game loading times are just as fast as my brothers oclocked amd athlon system with a 60 ghb 7200 rpm...and a 200 gb 7200 rpm. he has all his games installed on the 200 gb hdd and that has some serious speed. yet when we load up bfield i am right there with him...sometimes i fall behind a couple of seconds. thats serious speed right there from a laptop hdd. cant wait for a larger one soon!
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post #17 of 33
2/15/05 at 8:41am
It takes me about 2 hours for a complete defrag and re install of all the programs I use, and the updates etc, For 80% of that time, I am not sitting in front of the lappy, I do it when I have a heap of cleaning to do at home, as I hate cleaning but I enjoy reformatting, While washing, vacuuming etc, I enjoy the 2 minute break to swap cds during the install of the programs etc..

Yes I know I need to get a life, but why do I need a life... I have a Dell.... :-)
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post #18 of 33
2/15/05 at 9:35am
Less than 20 min to perform a disk to disk backup via Ghost in DOS. Like I mentioned before, by default Ghost leaves the destination disk fragment-free.
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post #19 of 33
2/15/05 at 1:57pm
Defrag does not take me more than 30 min. Also uhh if you have the defrag option set that it will defrag when the machine is idle, I think that should cut down on defrag time right?
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post #20 of 33
2/15/05 at 2:40pm
I defrag every two weeks. Usually I see a 6% fragmentation rate that while XP says it's ok, I run anyway. I see it like this... What is faster, shoveling (by hand) 8 inches of snow twice or 16 inches of snow at once?

For what it's worth....every two weeks...
1. Defrag
2. Full System Virus Scan
3. Full System Spyware Scan: Ad-aware
4. Full System Spyware Scan: Spybot

Hardware wise...
I took out my fans after 4 months, for a cleaning, and they were fine. If you are in a harsh environment (Iraq or a college dorm room) then check them more often.
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