Do you ever defrag anymore?

[edDV]

I tend to do it before starting a major project or when I see a problem. If you just run the XP defrag analysis program, you can spot when things have gotten out of hand. If you see most of your files spread over thousands of clusters then the flag is raised. As said above this usually happens when you fill a drive.

Another comment, for highly fragmented files you can just copy that one file to another partition and get quick results.

[akrako1]

Another comment, for highly fragmented files you can just copy that one file to another partition and get quick results.

...assuming that the destination partition has enough contiguous free space to write the file without any fragments... otherwise, you might end up with just as many fragments in your large file as you started with.

[Rudyard]

I use iobit smart defrag....I saw it on the major geeks website and it is one of those progrmas that continually defrags the HDD in the background when the CPU is at low usage.

However it appears that there is mixed opinion about this and I maybe killing my HDD..... Dont you hate it when there is no definate answer just many differing opinions so you dont know what to do!!

[RabidDog]

P2p will really frag up your disk , unless you pre-allocate all files.
simultaneous file copies will also really frag your disk. Internet surfing is quite frag-tatious too. defragging is def worth doing at least once, just like eating chocolate ants!

[alegator]

P2p will really frag up your disk , unless you pre-allocate all files.
simultaneous file copies will also really frag your disk. Internet surfing is quite frag-tatious too. defragging is def worth doing at least once, just like eating chocolate ants!

It takes a very long time each time I want to open the folder where I download/share P2P files, and also whenever I want to access any of those files. My hard drive is defragged though, so what could be the reason?

[Soopafresh]

With the huge files we video afficianados have to deal with, the biggest boost in performance comes not from defragging, but from having 2 physical drives - Especially when it comes to demuxing - read from one and write to the other. The difference in speed is tremendous.

Still, a good defrag can make the chances of recovering data from an erased file better (which might be a good thing or a bad thing)

[ScorpioDragon]

It also puts more wear on the drive....you may be doing more harm than good...etc.

Interesting posts.

"Rarely defragging" may be sufficient for those who use computers for simply "surfing the net," using basic office applications, and/or for purposes that are not too hard drive-intensive. However, for those (such as myself) who work with large video files [for example] should defrag their drives more often, and it is essential in supporting the quest for optimal drive performance.

I use auto defrag on all my drives, and have done so for years with no ill effects. Am I just lucky?...maybe, but I think not. I have an old 7 Gb [yes...7 gig] Western Digital hard drive that I've "auto defragged" for years (more than 7+ years now?), and I've put that drive through hell and back since day one. That drive is still alive and kicking today, and I still use it as a temporary drive for various purposes. I currently have more than 1 TB total of hard drive space (one of the drives is more than 4 years old [80 Gb Seagate]), and you can bet that I auto defrag all of the them.

The "TO DEFRAG or NOT TO DEFRAG...WEAR-and-TEAR" debate is endless, but defragging (and how often) is essential to some, but may not be essential to others.