Is defragmention any good?

[blackpearl]

Most people regularly defragment their hard disk, but I don't. People say that it increases performance and life of the hard disk. But in my opinion it does more harm than good.

Consider what benefit you get by defragmenting - just a few milliseconds gain in access time. But in order to make your hard disk's access time a fraction of a second lower you make your hard disk undergo massive disk thrashing for hours!! Some people state that defragmenting lowers disk thrashing by making the file available at one place instead of many places. True, but thats only minor thrashing, for just a couple of seconds or even less than a second, depending upon the size of the file. But to save the hard disk from a few seconds of daily thrashing you make your hard disk go through hours of thrashing - read-move-write;read-move-write .... non stop for hours. Isn't that going to do more harm to your hard disk? Isn't this exessive work out lower the life of your hard disk? Considering what you get in return, a barely noticeable difference in access time, do you think its wise to defragment your hard disk? Maybe 3 times a year would be OK, but certainly not monthly.

I did some search and found some articles that says that defragmenting does not help to improve performance. The only use, if any, of defragmenting is that it helps recover data in the event of a disk crash. None of them said about the disk thrashing part though, thats completely my idea. :)

While it was true that defragmenting helped older PCs, it no longer applies. Today we have 7200-RPM (rotations per minute) hard-disk drives with improved seek and latency times; many also contain an 8-MB cache buffer. Let's not forget Windows XP's ultra-efficient NTFS (NT File System). For PCs, servers, and workstations equipped with these innovations, defragmenting no longer makes much improvement, if any, to system performance.

The PC World Test Center's tests reveal that defraggers don't actually improve performance. And Steve Gibson, president of PC consulting firm Gibson Research Corporation, confirmed our findings.

Nevertheless, regular defragging is still a good idea to aid disaster recovery. The more fragmented the files on your drive are, the more likely a disk error is to destroy them.

So what is your opinion?

[sakumar79]

If your files are defragmented, whenever you have to access a particular file, the computer will have to read from various parts of the disk. During this process, the computer will have to spin the disk back and forth. This will lead to reduced life of the hard disk. By defragging once in a while, you will make sure this process will be reduced. In NTFS partitions, files are less likely to be fragmented, and so, you may need to defragment it less. Basically, the more often you need to access the files in a particular partition, it is healthier to defragment the drive more often.

Arun

[Stick]

Once in Month or 2 months is OK

[Cool G5]

If u are worried about the time taken for defragging.Use Auslogic disk defrag.
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Hard-Disk-Utils/Auslogics-Disk-Defrag.shtml

[anandk]

i had come across this much earlier, and am inclined to agree with these findings; nevertheless, out of habit, i guess, and bcoz it is there :D i defrag my disk once every 3 mnths or so.

thanx for such a nice post :-)

[ashisharya]

auslogics defrag is da best defrager

[blackpearl]

i had come across this much earlier, and am inclined to agree with these findings; nevertheless, out of habit, i guess, and bcoz it is there :D i defrag my disk once every 3 mnths or so.

thanx for such a nice post :-)

Actually I defrag too, not out of habit though. I defrag the C drive using O&O Defrag with the setting "Complete/Name". What it does is that it arranges the files alphabetically which helps Windows boot quickly, and it really works. Other than that I rarely defrag. Sometimes after a few months I defrag the drive where I install my s/w or games.

[s18000rpm]

i defrag once in 2-3 months, for me usually the game files get defragmented, not mainly because of gaming, but coz i mess with them:D

when the bigger files (800MB & bigger) get fragmented, i use a less time consuming method, just "cut-paste" it on other partition & then reverse-> "cut-paste" it to original location. this way it gets copied as a contiguus file :wink:

btw i use DiskTrix Ultimate Defragger, its does the defragmenting really Fast.

[EagerBeaver]

How to defrag Registry ??????????

[s18000rpm]

i use TuneUp Utilities 2007 for registry Defragmentation.

[koolbluez]

very useful... provided ur drive was very fragmented before doin it http://img116.exs.cx/img116/6469/g5cgrin.gif

[kalpik]

Hehe.. I too hate defragging.. That's why i use Linux! No need for defragging at all!

[teknoPhobia]

i defrag once in 2-3 months, for me usually the game files get defragmented, not mainly because of gaming, but coz i mess with them:D

when the bigger files (800MB & bigger) get fragmented, i use a less time consuming method, just "cut-paste" it on other partition & then reverse-> "cut-paste" it to original location. this way it gets copied as a contiguus file :wink:

btw i use DiskTrix Ultimate Defragger, its does the defragmenting really Fast.

I have news for you... it doesn't, windows writes to the first available sector/s, so unless you have that much contigous free space at the beginning of the partition, youre just wasting time. Of Course, you could just copy everything and then move them back, but youd require that much free space on another partion and so on, and I fail to understand the concern about the time taken, for me defragging a 60GB partition which is 60% or more full takes about an hour

[s18000rpm]

i dunno about the sectors, but this method works for me, every time.:D

my game partition is right now has only 15% space. (25GB partition), & yesterday i did the cut-paste thing for a 900MB GTA file, & it worked:wink:

[Shasanka_Gogoi]

If u have a large no. of huge files and have not defragmented for many months than your hard disk will surely undergo massive disk thrashing for hours. But make it a routine to defragment once a week using O & O(trust me its the best) and u would surely notice the performance gain over time.

[blackpearl]

There is one program that defragments on the fly. Haven't tried it though, but if it works it would save a lot of time and will be very effective.

http://dirms.com/

[khattam_]

Ashampoo Magical Defrag defragments your HD when CPU is idle in background..... it is a very good defragmentor...

[Pathik]

i defrag once evy six months...

[goobimama]

Defrag is good when there is less RAM in the system. It speeds up the virtual memory performance. But if there is ample amounts of RAM, say above a gig, then I find it to be less of a performance increase...

I don't defrag.

[sakumar79]

Defragmentation is not only about improving performance... It also helps to improve hard-disk life...

Arun

[koolbluez]

^^^^^^^^^
Yes... I agree with Sakumar here.... defrag also enhances life of the HD... y... because lesser in-drive motions!!!
Read this (http://www.securitysoftwarezone.com/maximize-your-hard-drive-life-review42-1.html)

But over-defraggin can actually reduce the life too :wink:

[::cyborg::]

use a ntfs partition it takes very less time to defragment

[sakumar79]

That is true, NTFS partitions are less susceptible for fragmentation than FAT partitions... But if you frequently write data to the partition, in about 6 months to 1 year, you will have serious fragmentation. This is based on experience (partition with programs didnt get fragmented much after 6months, but partition with data got very fragmented and took a while to defrag...)

Arun

[Chetan1991]

Well who orders you to defrag it every week?
just do it once in 6 months or when you uninstall a huge program and install another one.

[nilesh.3892]

How to defrag Registry ??????????

USE pagedefrag. It will defragment your pagefile and registry before Windows starts.:)

[ax3]

auslogics defrag is good .........

default defrag takes ages 2 complete & u r right (me 2 realised NOW) ..... defrag ur hdd 2 get JUST few secs of access time 2 ur files ........ & in turn hdd & pc gets heated 2 .........

i used 2 defrag after 5months ........

[rajasekharan]

I use perfect disk 8 and defrag once in two weeks :-). No probs yet .

[supernova]

Even I defrag once in 3-4 months.. and being NTFS it doesn't take that long what it used to be in Win 98/Me days...:)

[gary4gar]

Hehe.. I too hate defragging.. That's why i use Linux! No need for defragging at all!
even there are tools available for defrag available in linux too

[go4saket]

Defragging once in a few months is fine for me...