About Defragmentation

Ravencrow · Post by **Ravencrow** » 2003-05-25 02:02am

I hear that some people saying that you should defrag the hard drive once a week, and some others saying that it's best not to do it so frequently. (I do it once per 2-3 weeks) And then there are people who don't it at all.

I'd like to clarify, is there such a thing as "defragmenting the harddrive too often"?

or better put:

Why do some people say that defragmenting your harddrive too frequently can mess up the computer?

Hethrir · Post by **Hethrir** » 2003-05-25 02:11am

No idea. Depends on the OS and how much you use it and what you do. I defrag once evey blue moon. I run NTFS and only game and surf so my HDD doesn't get very fragmented.

Some people defrag too often. If one jpg has a fragment in it - don't defrag. If the drive churns very boot up - defrag.

Ravencrow · Post by **Ravencrow** » 2003-05-25 04:49am

I'm running XP (NTFS format too I think), and use my computer mainly for gaming. But I've always heard different things about defragmentation and so I was wondering about it. What would be a sign of a computer that has been defragmented too often?

Xon · Post by **Xon** » 2003-05-25 04:56am

Ravencrow wrote:What would be a sign of a computer that has been defragmented too often?

No thing.

Its just a waste of time if the drive isnt highly fragmented.

(By fragmented, the data isnt layed out continiously on the drive, and it has to spend longer seeking the file pieces)

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2003-05-25 10:34pm

I occasionally defragment my computer, but not that often.

TrailerParkJawa · Post by **TrailerParkJawa** » 2003-05-25 11:22pm

I used to defrag my drive every Friday night, not because I think weekly is a good schedule, but because I was almost always home on a Friday night.
Every two weeks , is a good time frame if you use your hard drive heavily.

Never, never, try an Exchange Servers database!

My experience is sticking to a good defrag schedule keeps the drive in decent shape. If its been an entire year, Id rather reinstall.

Darth Yoshi · Post by **Darth Yoshi** » 2003-05-25 11:30pm

I've had my computer for a few years now, and I defragmented it for the first time today. So I guess you don't have to defragment to often.

BrYaN19kc · Post by **BrYaN19kc** » 2003-05-26 12:13am

We run a third-party defragmentation program on all of our servers in the data center - (Diskkeeper by Executive Software).

Microsoft has repeatedly released white papers about the importance of defraging hard drives. Microsoft contends that "fragmentation is a performance-robbing problem and deframentation is the only available solution."

I have seen a huge performance improvement in our servers by scheduling defragmentation software to run a minimum of once a week.

Even though XP has it's own defragmentation program, it is not very efficient. It requires multiple passes to successfully defragment a hard drive and it does not consolidate the free space.

If you are a pretty heavy user of Windows NT Workstation/Win 2k/XP then you should consider defraging at least once a week. If you are a normal home user then every three weeks or so is fine. Just keep in mind that the longer you wait to defrag a drive the longer it takes a session to be performed.

I don't use the defrag program that comes with XP / it doesn't have a lot of really decent features. Microsoft contracted this portion out to a company called Executive Software that makes Diskkeeper. This is a great program to run.

Just remember that if you are running Oracle database - stop the instance BEFORE you defrag or you will have BIG problems.

BrYaN19kc · Post by **BrYaN19kc** » 2003-05-26 12:16am

Also, (I forgot) I have an extensive white paper on defragmentation by another defragmentation software company. It is in PDF format. If you are interested in it, drop me a PM or an e-mail and I will get it to you.