Is defraging necessary?
in [Windows XP]
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From: HeyBub on 14 May 2010 09:25 Lisa wrote: > I was told by a computer repairman that it's not necessary to defrag > my laptop. If the hard drive gets full, remove files and always make > sure I'm using a virus protection. > What are your thoughts? I can envision a situation in a data center with hundreds of thousands of transactions per minute where defragging may be of some slight benefit (assuming an NTFS file system). I can also imagine a user devoted to daily defragging experiencing a power interruption during a critical directory manipulation process.
From: Leythos on 14 May 2010 09:56 In article <#1wndj28KHA.3176(a)TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl>, heybub(a)gmail.com says... > > Lisa wrote: > > I was told by a computer repairman that it's not necessary to defrag > > my laptop. If the hard drive gets full, remove files and always make > > sure I'm using a virus protection. > > What are your thoughts? > > I can envision a situation in a data center with hundreds of thousands of > transactions per minute where defragging may be of some slight benefit > (assuming an NTFS file system). > > I can also imagine a user devoted to daily defragging experiencing a power > interruption during a critical directory manipulation process. On a small computer with many add/delete/grow/shrink operations, defrag can significantly impact file access times and can be very noticeable to users if their system was badly file fragmented before the defrag. White-Space fragmention is not normally an issue, but a file that is fragmented into 8000 parts will have an impact on system performance. This argument has gone on for decades, but it's the people that maintain systems across many areas that know the benefits of defrag. -- You can't trust your best friends, your five senses, only the little voice inside you that most civilians don't even hear -- Listen to that. Trust yourself. spam999free(a)rrohio.com (remove 999 for proper email address)
From: Db on 14 May 2010 14:49 I think the question is a little ridiculous. you should do your own analysis and determine if defrag is beneficial for you and your system. --------------------- the train of thought is that most computers have faster and larger hard drives with "lots" of room in the gigabytes and terabytes and because there is plenty of room for fragmented files and disk access speeds are very fast, defragging has little affect on performance. however, there was a time that small hard drives did require defragging. in my opinion, if the amount of data has not exceeded 50% of the disk, then you may be wasting your time in defragging. but the above is subjective and there is really no rule of thumb and you will have to determine if your disk needs defrag or not. on the other hand, if your tripping an acid, then it may be entertaining to stare at the defrag screen and watch all the colorful little blocks move around. ~db "Lisa" <Lisa(a)discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message news:1AA94818-B553-4478-9F58-668B6F68C348(a)microsoft.com... > I was told by a computer repairman that it's not necessary to defrag my > laptop. If the hard drive gets full, remove files and always make sure > I'm > using a virus protection. > What are your thoughts?
From: Leythos on 14 May 2010 15:45 In article <8BE3710B-3210-4A30-9770-A8B5E56D1715(a)microsoft.com>, databaseben(a)sbcglobal.net says... > > in my opinion, if the amount > of data has not exceeded > 50% of the disk, then you > may be wasting your time > in defragging. > And that's why people don't really pay attention to what you post here DB. It's not about how much free space you have left on the disk, since free space has little to do with fragmentation, other than making it worse when you have less free space. What does impact fragmentation is the number of ADD/DELETE/SIZE Changes you make to the files on the drive. I've seen a single PDF, on a drive with 800GB free space, fragmented into 29,000 parts. It would take up to a minute to load, after the defrag it took a few seconds... -- You can't trust your best friends, your five senses, only the little voice inside you that most civilians don't even hear -- Listen to that. Trust yourself. spam999free(a)rrohio.com (remove 999 for proper email address)
From: John on 14 May 2010 18:05
I'm curious. How did you know the file is fragmented into x parts? What software did you use to see this fragmentation? "Leythos" <spam999free(a)rrohio.com> wrote in message news:MPG.2657727c502cb8cd98a360(a)us.news.astraweb.com... > > I've seen a single PDF, on a drive with 800GB free space, fragmented > into 29,000 parts. It would take up to a minute to load, after the > defrag it took a few seconds... |