Not really when someone decries the whole OS as useless and suggests the
whole thing should still be in beta because defrag.exe dared to change the
way it worked between versions of the operating system.
Now you're talking about one person. Your original statement was
referring to more than one person.
I'm very well aware of how defrag works and what it does, thank you. I'd
speculate that I'm far more aware than someone who thinks a typical user who
'uses their machine a lot' will really see a definite benefit from running
the defrag program twice a week - especially on Vista where I understand
Microsoft have a weekly background task set to run it once a week to do a
little tidying up as it is.
Apparently so.........
I honestly don't see where you get this idea from.
Shrooms!
Maybe - but how long is "too long" exactly.
There's no single answer to that. It depends on usage.
And I still assert that the user
might use their time on the computer far more productively if they get on
with what they purchased it for rather than obsessing over odd system
utilities.
I agree. That's why I schedule it and forget it.
Especially when Microsoft have scheduled a defrag task to run
weekly anyway, as you note.
I guess I've been lead down by the garden path by computer magazine
columnists and PC Utility advertisements.
I can't speak for Vista, but from what I've read previously, Windows
defrag utility did a "fair" job at defregging. The defrag utilities
from people like Raxco, Diskeeper and Symantec take it farther by
moving frequently accessed files to where they can be most quickly
accessed and so forth. There are other things they do that Windows
won't do but I can't recall them at the moment.
Well once a year is probably too long to go without some kind of system
maintenance, that's for sure. I suggest quarterly runs for most "average"
home users on a well specified machine. By the way, did you _only_ run
defrag? Or did you check everything was updated, clear out temporary files,
maybe even run chkdsk and generally tidy up the system?
My typical routine is to run chkdsk once a week as well (or whoever
Windows starts acting up on me). And yes I clear out temporary files
regularly. In the past I've used the disk cleanup utility in XP
although I've found that it seemed to get confused as to where
temporary files were located (particularly IE cache) and neglect to
delete some of them.
So every so often I'd delete them manually.
And I used to run a registry cleaner utility (part of Norton
SyttemWorks) before I a) learned cleared up all my "problems" and then
created new ones and b) decided Symantec is the root of all evil. Now
I only use such measures when desperate with different software.
Again, I'm quite happy to put my reputation (such as it is) down and say
that doing a "proper" maintenance cycle where you do all these things
quarterly is going to be better for most people than just running defrag
twice a week as you suggest, let alone timing it as the original poster
seems to favour.
You keep harping on *twice*. I said "once or twice". Let's pretend I
just said "once" OK? In all honesty that's the schedule I set in
PrefectDisk (and SpeedDisk before that).
Would a car that gets serviced properly every 6 to 12
months be more or less likely to run better than a car whose owner tops up
the windscreen washer fluid or maybe the oil daily but doesn't perform any
other routine maintenance tasks?
No but I never said I neglect other routine maintenance tasks. Those
are your words, not mine.
Let's get something else straight here. There are MANY different types
of users. Some could probably go for a year with out a defrag [waves
to Mom] some would do well to do it every week or two.
I'm not stating this as fact and I'm no expert. I'm just trying to
make a point.
I personally spend 16-18 hours a day, 7 days a week on this computer.
Much of that is web surfing (I've read that cache files are infamous
for causing fragmentation).
I'm a download junkie. And much of what I download is software. Most
of that is installed right away (I've read that is a major contributor
to fragmentation) and often times I turn around an uninstall it
shortly thereafter.
I'm an OS junkie. I frequently install new operating systems,
uninstall others. Move stuff around on various drives and so forth.
Now maybe I'm nuts, but I guess I just assumed I'm the type of user
that needs to pay more attention to system maintenance (compared to
your "average Joe).
But apparently I'm an ill-informed idiot, so who knows....
--
Scott
http://angrykeyboarder.com
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
NOTICE: In-Newsgroup (and therefore off-topic) comments on my sig will
be cheerfully ignored, so don't waste our time.
