Do you ever defrag anymore?

[p_l]

Back in the day I used to do it all the time, but now I can't remember the last time I did it.

[vico1]

Yup...Just the other day, three drives, nine partitions, used Vopt...

[redwudz]

I do it about three times a year. I see no reason to wear out my hard drives with constant defrags if they don't need it.

[Bodyslide]

I do my Main Drive once a Month and My Video Drive every 2 weeks...

[cyflyer]

nine partitions

why so many partitions ? why are partitions needed anyway ? I once tried to reformat a HDD and found that you can't delete the partition during the formating, and had to download another program for this. A load of hassle.

[AlecWest]

Quarterly is about what I do. However, if I'm going to do something that keeps me at home but away from the computer for a while, I'll usually run a defrag. So, at least 4 times a year.

[RabidDog]

I see no reason to wear out my hard drives with constant defrags if they don't need it.

you will wear out your drives MORE by not defragging 8)
set it and forget it diskeeper

[DarrellS]

I used to defrag once a week with 98SE but every time I reboot after a defrag of W2K I get a message that Windows is checking the integrity of my drives and erases almost all my data so I never defrag anymore.

I read somewhere that you don't need to defrag an NT file system anyway.

[Robert Simandl]

When my video files start to stutter on playback, I defrag with JKDefrag. End of problem. Happens about 4 times a year.

[Xylob the Destroyer]

it depends on the drive and the computer -- basically, it depends on what I'm doing with that particular PC/drive.
The jukebox PC in the basement? maybe twice a year.
The PC upstairs in the 'office'? Every week.
HTPC? Depends on the drive -- one of them gets defragged about twice a month, another maybe 3 times a year, the C: drive gets it whenever it needs it, but still not very often.

[Dv8ted2]

I see no reason to wear out my hard drives with constant defrags if they don't need it.

you will wear out your drives MORE by not defragging 8)
set it and forget it diskeeper

Diskeeper is not the end all with hard drives. Diskeeper will continually nag you that you need to defrag. It will tell you after you just defragged to defrag.

[Dv8ted2]

I read somewhere that you don't need to defrag an NT file system anyway.

Not true

As hard drives spin, the data is written to any empty area it can find. As time goes by the data gets scattered. Defragmenting moves the data closer together so your programs launch faster and you can access your data faster. Whoever said that NT does not need defragmenting, was misinformed.

[Timoleon]

I used to defrag a lot with Windows 98, using Norton's Speed Disk, but rarely do it with XP --- maybe three times a year, and that with Windows built-in defragger.

What I do a fair amount of, however, is cleaning up and compacting the registry. You have to be careful, however --- some of the registry tools out there screw up your system more than they help. I've had non-bootable hard drives before from registry cleaner screw-ups.

[bits]

I record/nix commercials/watch and delete a fair number of video files each day so I use Perfect Disk to defrag my video drives when the percent fragmentation gets to 7% or more. That translates into a defrag every 7-10 days or so. I also have my cluster size set to 64K on my video drives since 99.9% of the files are 2GB or larger.

I have been doing this on several 250GB and larger drives for nearly (3) years now. These drives are never turned off either.

[p_l]

some of the registry tools out there screw up your system more than they help. I've had non-bootable hard drives before from registry cleaner screw-ups.

Yup, it's happened to me, too. Since then, I've been trigger-shy about doing anything with the registry, although I should probably tend to it eventually. What registry apps are there out there that do a good job but don't risk doing more harm than good?

[yoda313]

I only do it once in a great while. The larger harddrives make it longer and longer to run the scans

[luvvbuzz]

never defragged in my life, owned a home pc since 1999, i never saw the point in it.

[vico1]

nine partitions

why so many partitions ? why are partitions needed anyway ? I once tried to reformat a HDD and found that you can't delete the partition during the formating, and had to download another program for this. A load of hassle.

I always multi-partition my drives...especially on my "working" desktop.
My partitions are "dedicated" to how I use them.
(three 300GB drives, each having three partitions)
System, Video (with subset partitions) Audio, Working Test partitions, transitional partition. (with subset)

Everyone organizes their drives according to their personal needs...

This organization helps me to lessen "the hassle" in my work-flow...

[Wile_E]

I've been using PerfectDisk about once a week on all my drives. After about a week's use, I notice my computer slows down to a crawl accessing stuff. Mind you, I have still am using IDE drives. I hear Diskeeper is pretty good too, may have to try it.

[Legendsk]

[quote=Yup...Just the other day, three drives, nine partitions, used Vopt... smile.gif

9 partitions strike me as a little like designing a 2,000 square foot house with 67 rooms. I'm sure there are circumstances where that would make sense, but it would be a very unusual case.

[vico1]

9 partitions strike me as a little like designing a 2,000 square foot house with 67 rooms. I'm sure there are circumstances where that would make sense, but it would be a very unusual case.

As I said..."Everyone organizes their drives according to their personal needs"

And..."designing a 2,000 square foot house" with 2 rooms doesn't make sense either...

[JerryB]

hi,
myself I defrag and it does makes a difference in winxp system
1. i'll defrag about 1 or 2 month
2. or when ever my system start to get a littl sluggish or unstable
3. before I do any large progjects or doing major burning.... defrag makes big difference...

Back in the day I used to do it all the time, but now I can't remember the last time I did it.

[jimmalenko]

On my main PC I defrag nightly using a batch file in the dead of the night, as the machine is on 24/7 and does all my video/dvd work. Ripping DVDs and/or capturing/editing/moving DV frags up the hard drives pretty quick.

[alegator]

I defrag the system drive once a week, and offline defrag on every reboot with Perfectdisk. I also repair/optimize the registry once every 3 motnths with XP Repair Pro 2007.

[edDV]

It all depends what you are doing and how much you fill the drive.

I do a lot of DV format (big files). Fragmentation becomes a big issue as you fill the drive. Head seek overwhelms sequential transfer resulting in studdered playback.

You can fill a partition with small files but big DV files (13GB/hr) and HD MPeg2_TS files (9GB/hr) shotgun spray across the disk if you don't defragment.

I also find if I record large files to the OS drive, it gets upset quickly unless I defragment.

[alegator]

I hate hard drives, once flash drives replace them this thread will be history.

[Ron B]

I usually defrag my two "working" drives after doing a bunch of work. Loading up DV files, editing and rendering them, then deleting or moving these large files tends to leave a bit of a mess.

[ebenton]

Ashampoo makes a tool that defrags once and then runs in the background and constantly defrags your drive when there is no other activity on your PC.

[lordsmurf]

Modern file systems and OS's don't really need much defrag anymore. They tend to be a little more intelligent when handling/writing files.

Defrags can go bad too, so running a defrag on a drive with a massive file (video streams, usually) can be a real nightmare. It also puts more wear on the drive. You may want to re-think your nightly/daily defrag practices, as you may be doing more harm than good (or tempting fate more than you might realize).

I might have to defrag once a year at most. Using NTFS on WinXP, I have a low fragmentation level, and that's mostly the swap and temp files, so who cares.

[akrako1]

never defragged in my life, owned a home pc since 1999, i never saw the point in it.

This sounds like the type of person who goes and buys a new PC because their old one has "slowed down". Granted, they've never defragged, adware scanned, and have installed 100 programs since their last windows install... I'm happy to recommend a wipe, reinstall, and defrag. And lo-and-behold, it runs as fast as it did when they bought it. It must be magic!


Me... Diskeeper Set-It-And-Forget-It method works just fine for me. I have it do an hour's work on each drive every night, and they're always perfectly defragged when I wake up. BTW, there are various options in Diskeeper to customize it for your drives... you can set the defrag properties for each drive individually.. and you can select things like 'ignore large files' (for faster defrags, or if you're worried about messing up a large stream files, etc), or consolidate free space, or defrag your paging file (good luck trying to do that with Windows defrag), and many others... quite nice.