Disk Defragment

[davinda]

I agree with chloe, it makes lots of pretty colours on the screen, much nicer than watching TV.

[harrycary]

I will repeat this

The process is hard on the hardrive. Reading all of your data and writing all of your data (within that partition)requires alot of movement of the arm(s) within the drive. More so than any other action performed on a PC. Period

Electromechanical failure is what occurs most often when a hardrive fails.
Data gets corrupted due to failure of the read/write head and arm.

My point being, outside of power users, defragging should only be done every so often. Average users have very little to gain by doing this once-a-week.

If you have a large hardrive like TimZ, it certainly should be partitioned. Keeping your data separated from your O/S would be the "power users" approach. This way you could defrag the O/S by itself. You also benefit greatly in the case of an O/S failure. You wouldn't lose any of that data. Just repair or reinstall the O/S. This is fundamental.

That being said, go ahead and defrag once a week. You'll be replacing your harddrive within 1-2 years when it should last you 5 years or longer.

[harrycary]

That still doesn't change the fact about how much a drive works when defragging itself. (this is not a theory)

Maybe Maxtor drives are just that good. I don't know. More than likely it's an aberration, kinda like my customers who have a VCR that is 20 years old and working fine. Not everyone has such luck. Yours is but one of the million or so mfg/sold that year. Blanket statements, such as yours, cannot be made by one consumer.

I don't have all the answers, I just state the facts as I know them.

BTW, I have a hard time believing that defragging once a day has any redeeming value. I mean, unless you are testing software(installing & uninstalling) all day long, the difference this makes would be negligible at best(let alone measurable).

Tech-Support(oxymoron) asks if you've done that because most average users don't have any idea what defragging means let alone what it does. Consequently, their machine hasn't been defragged in awhile(if ever), making their PC run horribly. It's one of the first things I ask of anyone having problems with their PC.

Thankfully PCs with WinXP (and using the new-type-file-system[NTFS]) don't run into this problem[as much] due to it's efficiency.

No offense intended. I'm a minimalists, I run a lean, efficient machine and do so with minimal maintainence. I encourage others to do the same.

[imported_QuietSilence!]

balamm the bottle neck is in the HD speed a 500 mhz cpu is plenty enuff to keep up with any hd so a 2ghz cpu will make no diffrence at all and if its in dma mode it dosnt even use the prosseser at all it swaps data strait to memory

where the prosseser will help is in the inishal figuring out of where to move the data to begin with as it will run the algarethems faster but that is done before it ever starts the acualy defragmentation. this can be signifagent in one that dose a lot of figuring like putin the most used data first and listing file in alfbetical order and such

and ur right a 7200 rpm drive is not much faster then a 5400 but it is faster. the main diffrence ull have is the amout of cache u have on each 1 and even that wont make much diffrence to defrag as the gain u get in that is bursts not in sastained outputs

seek time is the amout of time it takes to move the head over the spot it needs to be at and start reading data and is prity much the same on all hds. where u get the inprovment in a 7200 HD is that once its there it will read the data faster since seek takes so long in computer time to do u wont notice the diff much in a single HD

but if u take the same drives and set them up in a raid 5 aray u will notice the diffrence big time as since it stripes the data to diffrent drives by the time its read the data off 1 drive it has all ready ready done the seek on the next one and so on all the way down the line so u get a continous stream of data and only the first seek counts agenst u there will be no delay for the next seek as it will do it wile the read or wright is going on the last one

so to rap up a single 7200 rpm HD will not be much faster then a single 5400rpm HD
becouse of the inharent seek time of each but but when u put them in an aray 7200s will be all most 2 times faster then 5400s

and prosseser speed will make little diffrence in defrag time and absolutly none at all if its in dma mode as it dosent even use the prosseser to swap data in dma mode

[imported_QuietSilence!]

harrycary it dose run the hd hard when u do a defrag but there bulit to take it 1 time ever week or 2 will not hurt it and will help u to do stuff faster on ur comp 1 time a month is to long and may even be harder on ur HD as it will have a lot more to do

i agree once a day is way too much and will not make much difrence to ur comp

now that said it also dependes on how and what u use ur comp for many peps that dont change much on there comp ever will be fine with a 1 time a month defrag.
but not the reguler kazaa user he will need it a lot more often as kazaa can fragment a file quicker then anything and also then are the ones that tend to try out new programs alot and deleat them when there done play with them of deside its not what they want

[drakkie]

Some of you are not getting what harrycarry is saying. What he said is "the more you defragged (whether once a day or once a year),the life of your HD get shorter. It's as simple as that!!! Harrycarry ,you are right up to a point, but wrong on the read.write/arm nonsense.

Let me helped you here!!. The damage is not in the read/write/arm (they are minimal) but in the spindle motor.All mechanical function causes wear & tear, the more you spinned, the more wear/tear there going to be.This will cause your disk plate to slow/wobble creating bad sectors etc..(too long to go into technical details)

I should know.. I make spindle motor.The more you spin(defrag) the more I make money. That why they are making fuild bearing!! DAMN IT!!!!