Can You Damage Your Hard Drive If You Defragment It Daily?

Hello,

I have a software program called "System Mechanic 4" which I use daily. It has a wizard you can run which does all of the following in one shot:

Cleans Junk Files, Cleans Registry, Cleans Internet Clutter, Removes Parasites, & Defragments every hard drive.

Well at the end of every day I run Spybot, Adaware, Avg Antivirus Scanner, and than I use the System Mechanic wizard. I do that daily and once a month I also run an "Optimum Defragmentation" using System Mechanic which takes like 4 hours to complete. I know defragmenting your hard drive once in a while is good and keeps your hard drive in tip top shape.

But can defragmenting your hard drive everyday damage your hard drive?

 

nah i wouldnt think so, actually it would be the best for it.

 

Potentially yes.

Lots of extra wear and tear from reading and writing data (and therefore spinning up and running at full speed). It's not going to do the bearings any good.

I think this is one of those discussions that comes up every once in a while and no-one has any proof either way so chances are that any damage you're causing is minimal. Hopefully someone here can point to a website that's actually tested this.

 

Technically, yes. In reality, no.

Defragging causes the hard drive to work. A lot. Any other program that causes the hard drive to thrash a lot ahs the same potential.

The reality of it is, if you defrag every day, how much does it stress the drive? Not a whole lot at all, due to the fact there is very little defragging to do.

I have an 80gb hard drive that I have ahd for 5 years, and still runs strong. Formatted easily a couple hundred times, and defragged like mad.


You aren't doing anything to the drive that it wasn't designed to do. If your hard drive fails, it wont be from excessive defragging.

Moving parts always fails sooner or later.

 

The real danger is from power glitches in the middle of a defrag, this is where you could loose data or your OS. If your power company likes to toggle the power I would highly recommend a UPS. If they're pretty stable the risk goes down.

 

I totally agree. I wish I could say that has never happened to me.

 

Wow these are some really interesting facts... I really like what Billy Mardsen said:

I've never had an UPS... I guess I have to look into that. My company doesn't toggle the power much but it seems like a good idea. Not to mention I have seen some UPS for cheap.

 

Hi. I think a sudden power loss can cause problems anytime your hdd is writing data, which is pretty often. There are several proggies which can be set to do an auto-defrag on schedule, including on a daily frequency. So, if there was any real danger to it, I doubt you would see software with that functionality built-in. A UPS is a good thing to have, no matter what.

 

It is either good or bad. The bad thing is that it will work up your hard drive alot, resulting in hardware malfuntion. the good thing is, well, your files get compressed to save space!

 

Is there a reason that you do all of this daily??? It seems very excessive. Personally, I don't really use Spybot/Ad-Aware unless I am having issues, and I rarely defrag my drive. (probably should do it more often, but everyday?) It seems to me that it is a waste of time and you could get by just fine doing this once a month. (or even less)

 

I tend to agree with Wyatt. Unless you are adding and removing programs daily there should be no reason to defrag daily. As also noted by others this would seem to put undue stress on the harddrive even though they are designed to endure it. Once a month should be sufficient.

 

y eah dude just once a month is fine

 

I concur with most of the above. Everyday seems quite excessive. I'm a Moderator on a couple of sites so I tend to install/remove programs in order to experiment/seek answers etc to problems. I defrag once a month (basically) and don't really see much efficiency differences. Defragging does work the hard disk, and causes wear on the disk. I have several different hard disks across five machines (WD, Fujitsu, Seagate, Maxtor, Samsung, etc) and they all perform quite reliably (except those d*$m Quantum Fireballs, had a few of them bite the dust, just not reliable). I have one left out of five, and feel this is an exception. It wasn't a 'lemon' out of the bunch. I'll never use another one, but this is off track.

 

I concur with most of the above. Everyday seems quite excessive. I'm a Moderator on a couple of sites so I tend to install/remove programs in order to experiment/seek answers etc to problems. I defrag once a month (basically) and don't really see much efficiency differences. Defragging does work the hard disk, and causes wear on the disk. I have several different hard disks across five machines (WD, Fujitsu, Seagate, Maxtor, Samsung, etc) and they all perform quite reliably (except those d*$m Quantum Fireballs, had a few of them bite the dust, just not reliable). I have one left out of five, and feel this is an exception. It wasn't a 'lemon' out of the bunch. I'll never use another one, but this is off track.

Edit: Sorry for the double post, didn't seem to be doing anything (probably my ISP) so I hit "Submit" a second time.........

 

I doesn't cause any more wear than a program that uses your swap file a lot. Might as well say that your hard drive will fail earlier because your machine doesn't have sufficient ram.

Hard drive life is judged by mtbf, not defragmenting.

 

No It wouldn't hurt your hard disk at all.