Just a quickie.......

How often does everyone here run defrag on their hard-drive, if at all ?

And how long does it normally take..( I think this depends on size of HD ovbiously but just wanna know)

:)

I do it every 10 days or so, along with scandik and disk cleanup (I use the maintenance wizard to do the lot).

defrag probably takes 20mins or so - 20Gb to do on an old PC. It takes longer if the disk is badly fragmented - start it up and go make a cuppa. The first time I ever did it it took 40 minutes!

Unless you are low on disk space, once a month should be fine.

if you defrag regular it wont take long at all each time you do it as it only has to defrag the last periods memory.

if youve had a pc 5 years and never bothered it may take a while.

I tend to do mine monthly, but i know of businesses whe defrag their machines every night after work, it keeps the memory nice and sorted, and only takes a few mins.

I would say for the average joe bloggs, defrag monthly.

"it keeps the memory nice and sorted..."

Are you sure?? :confused:

Originally posted by Major Ingram
"it keeps the memory nice and sorted..."

Are you sure?? :confused:

Yep - defragging bundles the "chunks" of data on your hard drive into packages that are more easily (and speedily) accessible.

It should speed up your PC as it spends less time skipping around picking up diverse bits of info from the HDD.

I've always been somewhat of a computer buff, I used to defrag regular but since not defragging I have not noticed any performance loss at all so I never bother with it, I can see the point of large corps doing it but the home user I don't see much point in, but then again I get fed up every couple of months and format anyway, I'm weird like that.
But then again defragging a 120gb hard drive would take me a damn long time and the only time I think of defragging I am busy on the comp :lol:

The format and reload has the same effect as the defrag.

Plus, if you have ahigh speed hard drive (7200 rpm vs 5400 rpm I think) then the effects of fragmentation are less noticeable.

on the other hand defragging and scandisking puts the hard disk under a lot of stress and if you to it to often it can shagg your drive!!!:yikes:

Haven't done any defragging/scandisking or reformatting on mine for about a year now - maybe I should.

I've got 3 drives though - a 20Gb, a 60Gb and an 80Gb - could take a while.

After nearly booting my PC at work cos it crashes every 5 minutes (P100 with 16Mb RAM)! I find mine to be really fast - it's probably capable of more TBH.

i defrag once every 6 months or so and thats it, i hardly do anything on the computer, very little software on it, no movies or owt, so nothing really to get fragmented

Originally posted by Richard Moss
Yep - defragging bundles the "chunks" of data on your hard drive into packages that are more easily (and speedily) accessible.

It should speed up your PC as it spends less time skipping around picking up diverse bits of info from the HDD.

Exactly, it cuts down on the sectors the heads have to move to in order to get to all the data. This has nothing to do with your PC's memory as the swap file very rarely gets that fragmented. If it does, then you neet more RAM.

Originally posted by Richard Moss
The format and reload has the same effect as the defrag.

Plus, if you have ahigh speed hard drive (7200 rpm vs 5400 rpm I think) then the effects of fragmentation are less noticeable.

Spindle speed makes no difference. It's the seek time you need to look at. Ideally you want a slower spin with a faster seek time. Quieter, longer lasting, less heat generated.

hmmmmmm

Last time I defragged, it took about 6 hours (20gb HD) :lol: :wtf:

You may have guessed that I don't bother very often as I don't find it makes much difference :)

Id like to defrag my 40 gig but it just sits at 1% compacting files for ages!

Windows defragger is slow, try diskeeper (lite) or speed disk (part of norton systemworks). They are much faster. If you use your PC a lot (i have about 2GB of net traffic and 5 to 15GB of other file traffic perday) then a defrag will help a lot ! i do it every 3 or 4 days.

I defragged once and lost everything.

Now I have all files I wanna keep on one drive and the OS and programs on another. When the computer starts to pi** me off i just re-format the C drive and start all over.

2x 120Gb @ 7200 RPM

Tweedle dee and Tweedle dumb i've named em :lol: Take most of the night to do them both. As dumb has my 3000 odd MP3's :D

Originally posted by Ste220
2x 120Gb @ 7200 RPM

Tweedle dee and Tweedle dumb i've named em :lol: Take most of the night to do them both. As dumb has my 3000 odd MP3's :D With windows defrag yes. Get diskeeper or speed disk. Seriously they are much faster. I have 2 SATA raid arrays ( 2X WD raptors and 2x maxtor 120s) a total system defrag takes about an hour or so.

2k / XP defrag is a licenced Diskeeper anyway.

Yes but a very slow and basic version. Microsoft just wanted something basic that could defrag NTFS. It does a very complete job, but takes forever and a day.

Yes, it is lacking some of the functions.

It's certainly not any slower on my 80gb drive. I've tried both and there's not enough in it to worry about. The engine they use is identical.

All IMO of course.

You could be right, i havent used diskeeper pro for sometime now, however norton speed disk is miles faster than win defrag.

Is speed disk part of Norton System Works?

yeah. I know some people dont like it, but its never failed me. The latest versions are stable.