Defragmentation

Darkmaster400 · Tue 27/06/2006 14:39:48

Hello,

I am wondering something about when you defragment your computer.
I heard that it is good to defragment fragmented data,
but I also heard that when it pack the files it can affect performance....
So my question is:

Is it good or bad to defragment?

Regards,
---

ManicMatt · Tue 27/06/2006 15:03:23

I believe you should defrag your hard drive once a month, depending on how often you save to your computer.

It should speed up performance afterwards, not slow it down!

dasjoe · Tue 27/06/2006 15:16:22

actually, depends on how you defragment.
i use o&o defrag on my pcs, the system drives gets sorted alphabetically => lightning fast boot.
games and stuff is sorted by modified-at-times.
temp drives gets defragmented for space, no further optimisation.

so, it generally speeds your computer up. windows' own defrag only does space, which is bad.

l'edit: 30 day trial available at http://www.oo-software.com/en/products/oodefrag/pro/

Darkmaster400 · Tue 27/06/2006 15:57:27

Yes, I have O&O Defrag though, but I was aware of using it since I heard it affected the performance bad..

Radiant · Tue 27/06/2006 16:44:57

Defragging is always a good thing. You can even go for weekly if your hard drive is reasonably small or reasonably empty.

It doesn't really matter what program you use, it's all the same method with a bit of different heuristics thrown in. So I wouldn't pay money for it if I were you.

Khris · Tue 27/06/2006 19:36:56

Quote from: Darkmaster400 on Tue 27/06/2006 15:57:27
Yes, I have O&O Defrag though, but I was aware of using it since I heard it affected the performance bad..

I wouldn't ask the guy who told you that for computer advice ever again.

Pumaman · Tue 27/06/2006 19:40:37

Bah, the "benefits" of defragging are pretty much the placebo effect. I've given up on it nowadays, it never seemed to make any difference performance-wise when I did bother to do it.

scotch · Tue 27/06/2006 20:02:39

I have to agree with CJ. I can't tell the difference between a highly fragged drive and a freshly defragged one.

Kweepa · Tue 27/06/2006 20:16:33

I think it depends what you're doing, but yeah, most people won't see much improvement.

If you're working on a lot of little files that shrink and grow and can be deleted and added (say the source code or the raw resources to a large game) it might be a disadvantage to defrag, because there's no room near the files you're working on for new files or new chunks of files.

I can see the advantage to organising the operating system files optimally, but then again it seems like Windows spends a lot of time thinking rather than accessing the disk on startup.

Rather than spending $50 on a specialized defragger, the average machine (with 512MB RAM) would benefit much more from another 512MB of RAM.

Haddas · Tue 27/06/2006 20:23:00

I notice the difference, especially if I haven't defragged for a long time and moved and deleted a lot of files. Although on the average computer the access times vary by just some milliseconds.

Tuomas · Tue 27/06/2006 20:27:28

well... I installed o&o defrag... it gave my hard drive a long beating, like 2 hours of surrurr. Then I got 100Mbs of free space plus I could easily see the difference. Let's say, that now that it keeps defragging my computer in the background all the time, I have only one mouse arrow on the screen at the time

MillsJROSS · Wed 28/06/2006 03:15:34

Defragging once a month is excessive, in my oppinion. Maybe twice a year. I really don't see that much of a marked improvement after defragging. Not in todays, computers, anyway. It's a good thing for your computer, but if you're doing it for speed, it's not going to boost performance enough to make much of a difference.

-MillsJROSS

Nikolas · Wed 28/06/2006 07:46:42

Well in my case I HAD to defragment my disks...

In music you have to be getting info realtime and lost of it from the hard disks and actually it did make a lot of difference. After Iinstalled a 41 GB sample set, that is. All of it was fragmented... All... so you can imagine moving it to the right place made a lot of difference i nthe sound.

Radiant · Wed 28/06/2006 12:30:32

Quote from: MillsJROSS on Wed 28/06/2006 03:15:34
Defragging once a month is excessive, in my oppinion. Maybe twice a year. I really don't see that much of a marked improvement after defragging. Not in todays, computers, anyway. It's a good thing for your computer, but if you're doing it for speed, it's not going to boost performance enough to make much of a difference.

That is a good point. Like many efficiency issues, today's computing power makes the difference trivial for most average household and office users.

dasjoe · Wed 28/06/2006 13:00:00

but not for meeeeee!!!!11!!!

anyway, i'm defragmenting this pc weekly, together with running chkdisk (do that *before* defragmenting. i learned my lesson some weeks ago).
my laptop gets defragmented once per month, depends on the fragmentation and on what i want to do. oh, and usually defragment my drive with music on only when i've added a lot of new albums because it's alphabetical

Darkmaster400 · Thu 29/06/2006 11:42:09

Hmm, I noticed the defragmentation takes space on my harddrive...
Since I started and now (in the middle of the process) I noticed that I lost maybe 2-3 gigabytes..
What happend to them?

SSH · Thu 29/06/2006 11:55:15

you'll get them back when it finishes

Tuomas · Thu 29/06/2006 11:59:04

you know you can't move a block when the other one is on the way... so you need extra space to move the other one to and then you can move the other from behind it

Afflict · Thu 29/06/2006 17:45:50

Quote from: Pumaman on Tue 27/06/2006 19:40:37
Bah, the "benefits" of defragging are pretty much the placebo effect. I've given up on it nowadays, it never seemed to make any difference performance-wise when I did bother to do it.

Thats why I dont, in theory ir should help but I never noticed the difference either...