Computer Defrag

[Raul Herrera]

Youhave full control over which drives, folders and files you defrag. Or simply use the default settings and let Defraggler do the work for you. Simple enough for every day users and flexible enough for advanced users.

I asked -to-speed-up-my-computer in another post and one answer was to run disk defrag. I have done this before and in the majority of cases (with multiple computers not just one) it seems to actually slow the computer down vs speeding the computer up. Why is this and what is going on?

There is absolutely nothing wrong with defragmenting your hard drive. Defragmenting reorders the data on the hard drive so that it is contiguous. "They say" that you will see a noticeable difference in speed, specifically faster. This was more true in the past, than it is now. Modern OSs, drives, and file systems benefit little from defragmentation. Yes, there are some cases where it makes a noticeable difference, but those are rare. Those occur on heavily used file systems where there are lots of writes/deletes going on. However, that is not the typical home or office user. A whole industry has popped up around defragmentation, and I personally feel its mostly snake oil. There are some benefits from advanced defragmenters, like moving data to the innermost track, etc. However, pure defragmention really provides little or no noticeable improvement.

Now as for your computers slowing down after a completed defrag... I honestly believe its not true. I think you are consciously looking for a difference in speed (which probably didnt happen) and therefore, subconsciously you think its slower.

Imagine that all of the information on your hard drive is a load of laundry. There are lots of different types of clothing and colors, and they all get mixed together in the wash. All of your clothes are still there, but they're jumbled together and take up a lot of space. This is similar to what happens over time to the data on your hard drive. Everything gets moved around and separated (or fragmented) and your computer has to work harder to find everything it needs.

When you finish doing the laundry, you usually sort your clothing back into organized piles so they can go back into your closet or dresser. When you defrag your hard drive, your computer is doing something similar. It's taking all of the data and reorganizing it so your computer can find things more easily and make the most of its available space.

Defragging your computer can both solve and prevent a number of problems. If you don't regularly defrag your hard drive, your computer may run slowly and/or may take a long time to start up after you turn it on. If a hard drive is too fragmented, your computer may freeze up or not start at all.

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Defragmentation reverses the process your computer uses to break up data when it saves files to your hard drive. Defragging reformats your drive, reconstituting the files that were fragmented when they were written (saved) to your disk.

Hard disk access is a highly mechanical process, even though so many other computer components are purely digital. And disk access is the slowest part of computing. It can typically take 5-15 milliseconds for your computer to access the bits and bytes on a traditional hard disk drive (HDD), whereas accessing data on a modern solid state disk (SSD) or in RAM is done in a fraction of a millisecond.

Aside from the time it takes to access files, the overall throughput of hard disks is also low. Typical HDD speeds are 100 MB/sec for larger files and 0.5-1 MB for small file fragments (which are more common in day-to-day operations). Check out our detailed guide to learn more about the differences between SSDs and HDDs.

Imagine you clean up your computer by deleting five GB of data from your hard disk, leaving a five-GB gap in the middle of space otherwise occupied by Windows, your applications, and data files. The next day, you download the next hot game, which may be about 20 GB. Your hard disk stores the first five GB of the game in that gap you recently freed up, and it breaks up the remaining 15 GBs into fragments and stores them into other free spaces or slots them at the end of the occupied disk space.

Now your new game is split up, or fragmented, into two or more pieces. The read/write head of your mechanical hard disk now has to piece together the files for the game when you launch it. Stitching those files together takes more time than it otherwise would if the data were kept in one continuous block of information.

Defragging a traditional hard disk drive is safe and easy, and it keeps your disk healthy. Regular defragmentation and other maintenance tasks help your computer run smoothly, and the risk of damage to your hardware or files is extremely small, even if the process is disrupted mid-flow.

Fragmentation occurs on every computer. When files are saved, they are chopped up and stored in individual pieces on the hard drive or SSD wherever there is space. Defragmentation reverses this storage chaos. A defragmentation re-sorts the saved files and puts them back together.

No difficult decision as to which is the best defragmentation strategy for your PC. O&O Defrag takes care of everything itself. All you have to do is choose whether you want to start O&O Defrag yourself manually or whether you want it to take care of everything automatically.

Checking and repairing the Windows rescue environment: The rescue environment is essential for both a functioning Windows and Defrag IntensiveOptimize. On many computers, the Windows rescue environment is damaged, for example due to incorrect updates, and is therefore unusable. We have therefore expanded Check&Repair in O&O Defrag 28 so that your Windows rescue environment works reliably like it did on day one.

Over time, more and more ballast accumulates on a PC. Temporary files, Internet cache and the like can take on considerable proportions. This can lead to a storage space problem, especially on modern SSDs. But backups also take much longer than actually necessary.

O&O Defrag 28 now clearly shows you all installed programs. And with one click you can easily uninstall what you no longer need. This saves storage space (important for SSDs) and increases your security.

* O&O Syspectr is an additional service from O&O Software that requires registration and can be used free of charge for 1 year as part of this offer. O&O Syspectr does not extend automatically (no subscription), but can be extended upon request for a fee.

Well that's for Windows because the way it writes files it breaks them all up, OS X doesn't do that on small files, so it eliminates the need for MOST users to require a regular defrag. Perhaps once every few years after many updates, upgrades, program installs and reinstalls may one require it on a Mac, then rarely again.

I outlined a safe way here that always gives you a bootable backup to check, plus it really optimizes the hard drive in the process. Also it stays optimized and faster longer when defragging software tends to require it again and again to regain the performance.

If you have Filevault enabled this procedure will not work because it's one giant encrypted image, this is designed to acquire it's results by copying the parts of files into one piece again and back into a alphabetical order according to the root level directory for optimal results, especially of fast loading of Applications into memory.

3: Hard drives are fastest at the beginning of the drive. and slowest at the very end. Data is first written on the top of the drive and works it's way down. However data doesn't magically move up to take available space, holes can develop with a lot of reads and writes. Also things can get out of order, the heads have to travel further all over the drive to boot or load programs for instance.

4: The first 50% of the drive is faster than the second 50% due to more sectors in each track which the heads have less to move and can gather more data at one time. So preferably if you can contain yourself to the first 50% of a hard drive, it will perform fast forever.

I always get twice as much boot hard drive space as I'm ever going to need, I can always partition the unused space and use it as a backup clone for on the road, or rare used items, emergency storage etc.

6: If one wants to create a Bootcamp or second partition on the boot drive, there might be OS X data near the bottom where the second partition will go, it's sometimes not easy to move this data further up on the drive.

Unfortunately the only way to remedy this is by backing up users data off the drive to a external storage drive (not TimeMachine or clone) and then using Disk Utility to Erase with Zero (Security option or move slider one space to the right) the entire drive (10.6) or the Macintosh HD partition (10.7 or later) then reinstalling OS X fresh, followed by programs and return of verified user files.

8: I don't advise using defragmentation software on a "live" system, it's dangerous and if it messes up your stuck. If anyone has defragged a PC before knows it's never really completes in actuality, but this method I have here will do so wonderfully. ?

So my solution is if your serious about performance, have large files like video that stretch across many sectors and want it in one piece, want to reduce bad sectors that can corrupt large and even small files, need to free up space for a partition or large file.

1: Reduce your boot drive user content (files, try movies first) so it's less than 50% of the drive filled (ideal) but never more than 80% filled as a full boot drive will make the computer not boot up.

2: Use a blank powered external drive (formatted GUID and OS X Extended Journaled in Disk Utility) and a copy of Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the OS X boot partition (aka Macintosh HD) to the external drive using the default settings and a full clone.

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