Disk Defragmenter

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What is the recommended frequency of running Defrag? (have WinXP). Weekly?
Monthly? Annually? Etc?

Thanks,

Kelly
 
Sat, 22 Sep 2007 09:42:00 -0700 from mmof3bys
What is the recommended frequency of running Defrag? (have WinXP). Weekly?
Monthly? Annually? Etc?
Click to expand...

It depends on your usage pattern.

If you notice a slowdown that can't be attributed to running
programs, it's time.

But for most real-life applications disk fragmentatuon has little
impact on performance.
 
Thanks for the response. I keep my pc as clean as I can, w/various programs,
anti-virus etc. But in the 18 months I have had my pc I have yet to use
Defrag. Keeping it clean as I do seems to do the trick. So, there is no
recommended frequency to run it then. and if you were (not me) to run
defrag like twice a week for no apparent reason other than you think it'll
improve performance, etc. Is it possible to make "things worse"?
 
Use to do it once a month, but skipped an 8 month period before the next
drag and did not really notice any significant difference in performance. I
just did and install of a major software package so I did perform a defrag
before the install.

JS
 
If you open Disk Defragger in XP, use analyze first, and this will tell you
whether you need to defrag. Actually, I defrag once a month or so even if
it tells me I don't need it.
 
There is no recommended frequency. You won't notice very much speed increase
in your computer either.
Suppose for example you have a program and your HD seek time is 10
milliseconds and you have 10 segments, each one on a different track. It
would take approximately 1/10th of a second longer to load the program than
if it were not
fragmented. This is a very, very rough estimate.
However, every mechanical device has an estimated or calculated life
expectancy.
Suppose the calculated life expectancy is one billion seeks of the access
arm.
Wouldn't it be better to do one seek as opposed to 10?
For this reason I defrag about once per week. I.E. Minimize the access arm
motions.
 
What is the recommended frequency of running Defrag? (have WinXP). Weekly?
Monthly? Annually? Etc?
Click to expand...


There's no answer that's right for everyone. It depends on how you use
your computer and it depends on how much you use your computer.

You should defragment your drive when doing so results in a speed up.
Here's what I recommend. Pick some arbitrary interval--for example
once a month. Defragment on that interval a few times, and assess
whether the computer generally feels faster after doing so. If the
answer is yes, defrag more frequently. If the answer is no, defrag
less frequently.

Repeat a few times, and you'll soon settle into a frequency that works
well for you.

Weekly is overkill for almost everyone, and most people would find
annually not often enough (although, especially with NTFS, Windows XP
doesn't normally need to be defragged as often as older operating
systems).
 
Try doing it once monthly, and run Disk Cleanup before you defrag.. combine
it with getting definitions for whatever anti-spyware you have..


mmof3bys said:
What is the recommended frequency of running Defrag? (have WinXP).
Weekly?
Monthly? Annually? Etc?

Thanks,

Kelly
Click to expand...

--


Mike Hall
MS MVP Windows Shell/User
http://msmvps.com/blogs/mikehall/
 
Running Disk defragmenter should never make performance worse.


--



Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
Gerry said:
Running Disk defragmenter should never make performance worse.
Click to expand...


A couple days ago I got rid of about 14GB of pictures, VDO clips and did a
defrag. Next boot asked me to validate my XP copy (it's legit), then a
message about some Network thing (no idea what it is) that didn't boot
properly, and finally a request to finalize the booting by clicking my
Administrator account (never have to do that). After that the PC worked fine
and I did a System Restore to get it back to normal booting. First time I
have trouble following a defrag, though.
 
Jay

On what basis are you making the connection to running Disk
Defragmenter? They are almost certainly unrelated.


--



Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
Unknown;2977633 said:
There is no recommended frequency. You won't notice very much spee
increase
in your computer either.
Click to expand...

While I dont think that defragging will magically improve speed to 150
, I do think that with regular defragging, any performance degradatio
attributable to fragmentation can be -avoided-. So, defraggin
regularly never hurts; at worst if there is no significan
fragmentation (i.e. nothing to defragment), then the defragger wil
quit after a few seconds. Total time wasted = few seconds. My defragge
is automatic, so I don't even worry about defragging...I just let it d
it's thing as it needs to without bugging me.
However, every mechanical device has an estimated or calculated life
expectancy.
Suppose the calculated life expectancy is one billion seeks of th
access
arm.
Wouldn't it be better to do one seek as opposed to 10?
For this reason I defrag about once per week. I.E. Minimize the acces
arm
motions.
Click to expand...

Absolutely true. Logically looking at it, defragging can help t
prolong the life of a drive, and possibly save a few bucks in prematur
hardware replacement costs. Higher fragmentation can also increase powe
consumption due to (probably) unnecessary actuator arm movements an
lead to increased heat generation. While this may not seem like a bi
deal on a desktop, it can be quite important for laptops where ever
bit of juice is precious. There was an intel paper on this very subjec
which compared power consumption between fragmented and unfragmente
drives. I dont have it bookmarked, but I think it still ought to be o
the intel site if you search there
 
Good point for laptops.
sareth said:
While I dont think that defragging will magically improve speed to 150%
, I do think that with regular defragging, any performance degradation
attributable to fragmentation can be -avoided-. So, defragging
regularly never hurts; at worst if there is no significant
fragmentation (i.e. nothing to defragment), then the defragger will
quit after a few seconds. Total time wasted = few seconds. My defragger
is automatic, so I don't even worry about defragging...I just let it do
it's thing as it needs to without bugging me.


Absolutely true. Logically looking at it, defragging can help to
prolong the life of a drive, and possibly save a few bucks in premature
hardware replacement costs. Higher fragmentation can also increase power
consumption due to (probably) unnecessary actuator arm movements and
lead to increased heat generation. While this may not seem like a big
deal on a desktop, it can be quite important for laptops where every
bit of juice is precious. There was an intel paper on this very subject
which compared power consumption between fragmented and unfragmented
drives. I dont have it bookmarked, but I think it still ought to be on
the intel site if you search there.
Click to expand...
 
I would agree with Sareth. Some people never defrag their drives fo
years and will probably not know the difference it can make, som
others cant run their systems without defragging very often if they d
a lot of disk intensive activities, they call it a disk disease. I hav
found that PC response is much better when you keep the fragmentation t
a minimum. The best thing is to simply analyze the drive every now an
then,you will know when to run it.
 
Isn't it the combination of Disk CleanUp and Disk Defragmenter that
makes the difference.

What is true is that there are many factors which affect system
performance. The key is knowing where the bottlenecks are? You can add
memory but if you do not have a high enough CPU what difference will it
make? You do not often read about disk read / write speeds but replacing
an old hard drive with a modern one might give a boost.

--
Regards.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
Depending on the amount of RAM you have, (perhaps 256meg) adding more can
make a significant difference regardless of the CPU speed. Replacing an old
HD with a modern one will not give a noticeable boost unless of course
there is significant disk activity. (many movements of the access arm).
 
There are countless permutations.

If there is isn't activity adding memory will not enhance performance.
There is an opposite counter for every point either of us can advance.
Increase capacity v reduce demand etc.

--



Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
I would say personally that it depends on how much you install software,
download music, delete files etc. I defrag mine about every 2 or 3 weeks but
I install all sorts of software and games etc.
 
How often do you run Disk CleanUp? What % free disk space?

--



Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
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