Disk Defragment

[Ramones53rd3rd]

I'm curious to what Disk Defragment does. Anyone know what it does, some people say to do it others say not to. Should I Defragment, I've never done it.

[geothermal78]

Disk Defragmenter moves all your files together and puts them in the center of your hard disk. Your hard disk is similar to a cd. It is read or accessed from the center on out. If you have a huge hard disk, then it can take time to load files if parts of them are spread out too far apart. When you save a huge Word .doc file for instance, the computer might put some of the saved file away from the main body of the file. I guess you could search google for a graphical view of how and why this happens. It is hard to explain. However, if you edit large video files a lot or edit large photoshop files a lot then it might be good to defragment once a week but most people could defrag once a month or 2 months. If you want to be a hick about it (I grew up in Idaho), you might say that defrag is "putting all your ducks in a row". (^:

If you have Win 95 or 98, then you can search google for Win ME's defrag which is faster and runs fine on 95 and 98. Win 3.1 loves to be defragged but it can take all night to do it. *laugh

I have two older systems 400 & 500mhz and they benefit from defrag. My new system (typing with now) is XP 1.4gig and has two hd in it (each 100 gig size) so it might be awhile before they need defragging.

Some people defrag everyday and they probably shouldn't as it increases wear and tear on the hard drive arm. However some arms don't have ball bearings and they use fluid bearings I think is the term. Anyway, the defragment tool should have an analyze button which should tell you wether or not defrag would speed up your system or not.

Lastly, defrag is better on slower systems. If you get up in the 1.8 to 2 gighz speed processors and you have 512K RAM, then it probably won't matter if you ever defrag as your brain would not be able to register the speed increase or decrease. *grin Unless you edit 12 gig video files a lot..... It seems there are exceptions to every computer rule.

hth,

geothermal78

[ricky]

i would recommend defraggind your pc once in a while, it'll put all the files together and make things faster...

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How is this kazaa related???

[drakkie]

Ok let me expand on geothermal explanation. Now your HD is partitioned into many sectors, like cutting a piece of cake., each capable of holding a certain amount of info. As you used over time, the info is copied over many sectors, not necessary in order like 1,234...resulting in fragment, abit in 1 sector another somewhere esle. When a big file is copy, window naturally copied to whatever is available, thus breaking up
the file. Furthermore a sector may not be totally used up.Using the cake as an example, supposing that piece
of cake is too big to fit into the box(sector) because the box has already something in it, you have to fit it into a new box, thus more fragmentation. What fragmentation does is to take all the broken pieces and put them together thus filling up all the unused sectors. Again not necessary rearranging your softwares, thus your software maybe in different part. Because of this reason, it is debatable whether defragment really helps in speeding up your application. That why some recommend to defrag , some say don't.

I came across an article about this but can't recalled where. The team who conducts an actual test failed to
verified that it actually help in speeding up the pc. It's a marketing gimmick by Commercial co , you know who, to reap the gullible people in parting with their money.On the other hand , the degrament program by Ontrack makes the most sense to me. Instead of arranging neatly all the data, like Norton, Ontrack arrange the data by sector leaving gap between each sector like a sedimentary deposit. The reason, I figure, is to leave room for the data to grow, thus deminishing fragmentation.Furthermore the program groups data according to usage , probably moving the seldom use to the outer limit.I am not endosing Ontrack, all along I am using Norton until recently I switch to Ontrack. You decide!!

[harrycary]

Geesh, in layman's' terms:
It's like cleaning and sorting the files in & on your desk. This makes things easier/faster to find. This, fundamentally, makes your computer run faster/more efficiently.

I recommend my customers do this every 3-4 months. Shutdown all nonessential programs first. (click "show details" for a graphical representation of the process)

Warning: this process is hard on a harddrive. Don't over do it.

Kazaa users should do this more frequently. Kazaa is notorious for fragmentating files.

Don't know(or care) much about 3rd part defraggers.

These are very general rules and vary among users.

Hope that helps

[drakkie]

Harrycary .. why is this process hard on HD?. I would like to know. When you cut,paste ,delete , write etc..
they all create fragmentation not only just kazaa.

[harrycary]

The defrag process requires constant reading and writing to the platters. If you listen to the harddrive you can hear how hard it works. The process goes: read data, store it in your memory(real or virtual) and than write it to your drive. This is basically happening to that entire drive(a good argument for partitioning a large hardrive).

In everyday use, you will never work a hardrive that much. The only process that barely comes close to this is hardcore video-editing and encoding.

I realize that most processes fragment data, but Kazaa just does it alot(especially when d/l movie files). I believe this is due to the inherent way Kazaa works by d/l multiple file parts(I may be wrong tho).

[chloe_cc2002]

I sat and watched it. It is like watching little blocks being assembled together. It is really rivetting to watch especially over hours and hours.

[sred2003]

i cant believe ppl suggest NOT defragging. they must be retarded.