when to defrag?

[MZB]

W7 Home. I turned off defrag scheduling as I prefer to do it when I
choose. Laptop is running reasonably speedy but when I do the analysis
it says 10% fragmented files.

Is there a rule of thumb. Should I defrag?

I use W7 Home

Mel

[Bob_Villa]

I never do any more...I use CCleaner about once a week to clear-out internet junk and run MalewareBytes pro and MS Security Essentials.
It is relatively anal and pointless to defrag (not just my opinion either).

[Timothy Daniels]

"Bob_Villa" wrote:
> .....

> It is relatively anal and pointless to defrag (not just my opinion either).

Especially in the case of solid-state drives (SSDs)! But in the case of
HHDs, I must admit to being occasionally anal and pointless. It just
makes me feel good. But is there any point in using CCleaner if you
don't defrag afterwards? I mean, if you remove the junk, aren't there
just a lot of holes left that take up the same space?

*TimDaniels*

[Bob_Villa]

Yes...oh, you mean on the hard drive! 8^) What % compared to a half Terabyte typical HDD?

[Ben Myers]

My laptop with SSD never gets defragmented. My desktop when I feel like it. If less than half of a hard drive is full, the effects of a defrag are minimal.

One exception: Email, whether you are using Outlook, Outlook Express (RIP), Eudora, Thunderbird or any email client that has copies of your mail. Email files, whether a single Outlook PST or multiple mail files like Thunderbird, get more and more fragmented when you send or receive mail. I set up a special shutdown procedure for a client who had heavy email traffic. Whenever he shut down his system, the Outlook PST file would get defragmented. Before I did this, his Outlook PST file was in thousands of fragments, and you could get a cup of coffee when Outlook started up.

If your hard drive is filling up, say more than 75% capacity, it's time to get a much larger drive, clone the contents, and go forward with the larger drive. Otherwise, just about everything gets fragmented and the system slows to a crawl.

Defraggler is an excellent tool to look at fragmentation of individual files, and you can use it to take action to defrag just a few important file.

Windows' CONTIG command defragments a single file... Ben Myers

[Timothy Daniels]

"Bob_Villa" asked:

> Timothy Daniels wrote:
>> "Bob_Villa" wrote:
>>
>> > .....
>>
>> > It is relatively anal and pointless to defrag (not just my opinion either).
>>
>> Especially in the case of solid-state drives (SSDs)! But in the case of
>> HHDs, I must admit to being occasionally anal and pointless. It just
>> makes me feel good. But is there any point in using CCleaner if you
>> don't defrag afterwards? I mean, if you remove the junk, aren't there
>> just a lot of holes left that take up the same space?
>>
>> *TimDaniels*
>

> ....

> What % compared to a half Terabyte typical HDD?

Beside wasted space, the holes represent fragmentation of the adjacent files,
something that causes a delay in file transfers and more wear on the armature.
OK, OK, that's being anally retentive, but equally retentive as cleaning out the
unneeded junk. I'd say that if you're going to use CCleaner, you might as well
defrag afterwards as well.

*TimDaniels*

[Larry]

I defrag at the end of each day, everyday before I shutdown. Updates
from Windows, occasional updates from flashplayer, shockwave, and
java as well as the antivirus software are continuous. I am using MSSE
and it is updated everyday. I defrag with ccleaner at least once a
week and for sure after major updates.

FWIW my harddrive (750 gigs) is about 18% full.

I currently use smartdefrag and open to any suggestions for something
better.

Larry

[Bob_Villa]

Each to his own...

[RnR]

The most recent stuff I read on this subject was of both opinions.
Personally I think it's okay to do but I would do it infrequently
because I think the gains are minimal nowadays with the faster drives.
Of course, you can still do it as before, if you want.

I happen to agree with Tim (I think it was Tim) about running defrag
after a CC because I think that would be the optimum time to do it.

[RnR]

That's Right !!!

[sharonf]

I am a big believer in defragging. I defrag at least once a week. I
use Auslogics disk defrag
(http://download.cnet.com/Auslogics-Disk-Defrag/3000-2094_4-10567503.html).
It is very fast and does a good job. Like the others I also use CCleaner
regularly.

[Ron Hardin]

It can affect startup speed, if you have say a new version of Firefox that has written
itself into abandoned tiny holes in the filesystem, or if Firefox has a huge history
file that it wants to read in (substitute any app for Firefox; history files will have
been written a tiny bit at a time and so scatter a lot)

Prefetch fixes it all after startup, when the files will be copies in RAM in any case.

I defrag infrequently but not never on an active machine. We have machines whose
permanent files change seldom that we never defrag.
--
rhha...@mindspring.com

On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk.

[Ron Hardin]

One thing to clean up if you've ever had an
antivirus program

C:WINDOWS/system32/drivers/fidbox.dat
and
C:WINDOWS/system32/drivers/fidbox.idx

at least on XP. You have to remove them in safe
mode because they're in use otherwise.

They'll regenerate and grow slowly until you
delete them again. It's caused by a Kapersky
(sp?) program that a lot of antivirus systems use.

Delete them every few months. They scatter into a
lot of holes and if nothing else slow down defrag
trying to reassemble and move them.

[Bob_Villa]

On Sunday, May 26, 2013 8:32:32 AM UTC-5, Ron Hardin wrote:

>
> It can affect startup speed, if you have say a new version of Firefox that has written
>
> itself into abandoned tiny holes in the filesystem, or if Firefox has a huge history
>
> file that it wants to read in (substitute any app for Firefox; history files will have
>
> been written a tiny bit at a time and so scatter a lot)
>

I restart probably once or twice a week...it's used often enough that we use "sleep" mode.

[Ron Hardin]

Bob_Villa wrote:
> I restart probably once or twice a week...it's used often enough that we use "sleep" mode.

We just last week restarted two machines that had been up 24/7 for over a
year. Say what you want, XP is a stable system.

We needed to reroute a power cable.

[Larry]

On May 26, 12:20 pm, Ron Hardin <rhhar...@mindspring.com> wrote:
> Bob_Villa wrote:
> > I restart probably once or twice a week...it's used often enough that we use "sleep" mode.
>
> We just last week restarted two machines that had been up 24/7 for over a
> year.  Say what you want, XP is a stable system.
>
> We needed to reroute a power cable.
> --

> rhhar...@mindspring.com

>
> On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk.

"...there has always been ghosts in the machine, random segments of
code that have grouped together to form unexpected protocols...."

Couldn't resist!

Larry

[cl...@snyder.on.ca]

Defragging is important when there are a lot of file
edits/deletions. On some machines once a week is hardly often enough
- while others can go a year or more.

[Bob_Villa]

On Sunday, May 26, 2013 8:43:27 PM UTC-5, cl...@snyder.on.ca wrote:>
> Defragging is important when there are a lot of file
>
> edits/deletions. On some machines once a week is hardly often enough
>
> - while others can go a year or more.

Questions: Does it make you feel better or does your HDD "feel" better? Does your HDD trash more (work harder) defragging or seeking files on a non-fragmented drive or using the swapfile?

It's a can of worms AFAIC.

[Bob_Villa]

Should have said, "seeking files on a fragmented drive".

[cl...@snyder.on.ca]

The drive thrashes less, database access is significantly faster -
all the way round better drive access speed.

[cl...@snyder.on.ca]

On Mon, 27 May 2013 09:13:59 -0700 (PDT), Bob_Villa
<pheeh...@gmail.com> wrote: