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...

[Ad]

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.

http://www.imahosting.com/sigs/nutto.jpg

[sred2003]

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

[kAb]

Originally posted by adthomp@30 April 2003 - 03:41
How is this kazaa related???
hardwareworld is not necessarily kazaa related.

many people suggest to defrag weekly. don't worry about it, its a common procedure.

[Timz]

it would probably take me a few days to Defrag, i have a 100gb hard drive, and i havnt defraged more than a year (just havnt gotten around to it) How long do u think it would take now?

[kAb]

Originally posted by Timz@30 April 2003 - 16:57
it would probably take me a few days to Defrag, i have a 100gb hard drive, and i havnt defraged more than a year (just havnt gotten around to it) How long do u think it would take now?
around 24 hours probably... maybe 30.

[{I}{K}{E}]

i think that depends how fast your computer is

[Schuler]

If you have a 100 gig harddrive you probably have a decent system along with it. I don't know an exact estimate but just leave your computer on overnight and defrag it.

[kAb]

Originally posted by balamm@30 April 2003 - 17:03
15 minutes to a half hour maybe?
(in XP/NT)
no... thats WAY to fast.

especially if you have movies, they frag easily and take a long time to defrag.

[{I}{K}{E}]

why wanna know it?? just try it!

[PcH]

Whatever you do, don't use Norton Speeddisk. It takes long and I don't know why they call it that. Just defrag. in Safe Mode for the best and fastest results. :)

[{I}{K}{E}]

try this website: http://www.pcpitstop.com (http://www.pcpitstop.com/pcpitstop/default.asp) it is a nice site that will test all important things on your pc and gives info/what to do when it's finished!!
It's a :D website

[imported_QuietSilence!]

it dont mater how fast ur comp is the main thing is how fast ur HD is

some tips on defarigng

first defrag all ur partishions once this is done u can keep the need to defrag to a minum by doing this

dl in kazaa to and "scrap" Or "temp" partishion after the dl is compleat move it to a partishion that is not fragmented or a "storage" partishion when u move it from 1 partishion to a nother it will defrag the file for u automaticly cus it will right it in a row as long as the partishion ur moving it to is not fragmented
so if all u use it for is too move fils from somewhere else too then it wont fragment at all

its a good idea to do this to movies as they play much better if there not fragmented
the only time u will have to defragment this "storage" partishoin is if u delet files from it as that will leve a big hole in the data but u dont have to do it every time u deleat a movie as its a big hole and the next one u move there will go too that spot first

ntfs has a sotra built in de fragmenter and u dont have to do it as often basicly it makes a good guess as to where to put a new file so it wont fragment

vary advanced servers such as sun main frames dont ever have to be defraged as they do it all dynamicly all the time

[davinda]

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

[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!!!!