Disk Defrag

Do you guys defrag your disk on a regular basis. If you yes, do you use the built-in defrag or a third party defrag program?

Thanks in advance.

 

Yeah once a month at least, use good old microsoft defrag.

 

This brings back memories of NTFS and fragmentation. NT4 days that is. Microsoft saying that NTFS won't need to be defragmented cause of how it is designed. Not sure of the particulars....but, alas, here we are. 2000 had defrag, and xp, and 2k3.....

I defrag every other week.

 

All my file systems are NTFS and if I dont defrag it becomes a very slow haulin' mess http://forums.majorgeeks.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

 

NTFS is what I use, since I know how to use recovery console and a few other tools to repair problems that rarely occur on my own computer.

Well, time for making dinner (0011 ugh....can't believe I forgot to eat today....)

 

M$ defrag is sufficient. I usually clean out cookies and temp files once a week then follow up with defrag every other week.

 

Personaly i use diskeeper from Executive softwarefor two reasons
1) it has made a differance in the speed of my drive.
2)it automaticly defrags in the back ground and you dont have to remember to do it your self. (that in it self was worth it for me)

 

"2)it automaticly defrags in the back ground and you dont have to remember to do it your self. (that in it self was worth it for me)"

Just FYI, you can do that with Windows' defrag.

 

this is true but it is more easily configured with diskeeper and it a much faster defrag as well as better performance gain.

 

i just use windows xp defrag, and the "Free up space on your hard disk" tool and it works great

 

I have been using XPs defrag program but it just takes too long and I forget to do it. I heard that those third party defrag program are more efficient and they can be scheduled to do it daily. I also heard that they have a smart feature where it will only defrag the drive when needed. I'm gonna have to download one and try it.

 

read that defraging more than once biweekly kills the drive slowly

 

I don't see how defragging would kill your drive. I think it will even save your drive because the head does not have to move to thousands of fragmented files scattered all over the drive. I wonder if there has been any research done on this topic.

 

Usually when i use the defrag it means my system got messed up and there's a new XP installation coming up... Damn im just too lazy.
I do suggest that after you formatted a drive or partition to clean a hard drive by using a program like "DBAN". (format hd doesn't mean clean hd) DBAN resets all bits to zero, this will make you acces your disk a little faster.

 

Binds and omegas points on the health of the disk is very interesting.
Perfectdisk is good I heard.

I like to defrag bootfiles and pagefiles.I defrag at irregular times and I havent seen performence differences with xp defrag.

 

Partition Magic has an Excellent Defrag Option which works FAST. But for some reason the OS (XP/2K/98) does not recognize the Disk as Defragmented after using Partition Magic.

 

No your drive actualy works harder and has more wear causing movement if not defraged at normal intervals but look and determin for your self at diskeepers myth buster page here-
http://consumer.execsoft.com/diskeeper/myths.asp?RId=1&flg=4
it is worth a look, But ultimatly up to what you want .

 

I prefer perfect disk.
I like how it uses the strategic "smart placment" method to place your files on your hardrive.
This method, places boot files together, older rarely modifed files together, and newest often modified files together, and packs all this tightly together.
This method, results in faster boot time, subsequent shorter defrag times, and newer disk writes are less likely to be defragmented-becuase free space is continuous.

the first time you run perfect disk, it will take a while, but after that it will not take hardly any time at all.

 

I use Norton speeddisk (and WinDoctor), nearly every day after I complete my housekeeping. I run CCleaner, Cleanup, Emptemp. Pest Patrol, Bazooka, Spybot first, to get rid of the crap, then run Speeddisk no matter what percentage it says is fragmented. I've been doing this for at least a year and it keeps my hard drive files nicely "contiguous". Love Norton. That is going to upset some readers, but it works well for me. I don't use their AV though. Doing a "defrag" very regularly only takes a short while. As mentioned previously, any first time "defrag" is going to take a long time. After that the time taken reduces proportionately to the frequency run, IMHO.

All this applies to my W98SE system. I haven't got that far into XP as yet, but will try the MS XP defrag first, when I do. Bazza

 

I forgot to mention I defrag my C drive about every other day, ( only takes about 5 minutes or so), my other three drives about once a week, they take about 20 minutes or so.

 

Your doing a low level defrag but I don't think it defrags the windows partition. That's only good before you format your drive. You'd still need to do a windows file system defrag.

 

Me too. Never had a problem with it.

I just do it when it needs it, on average once a month.

 

Any Links for Downloads on this?? I also tried out Diskeeper9 last week. Quite OK but i really like the Deatures listed for Perfect Dick.

 

I use diskeeper and set it to run whenever the screen saver comes on, then I don't have to think about it. when I was doing it myself though I always used VoptXP, SO much faster than the built in.

 

http://www.raxco.com/products/perfectdisk2k/

 

It's nice to know that they have a feature that lets you defrag only when screen saver is on. I'll have to try that.

 

Why link it there, when you can download Perfectdisk here:

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=268



I personally love perfect disk. I've used many different ones and this one is my fav. Many as in VoptXP, diskkeeper (haven't tried the newest one), O&O defrag, MS, speeddisk.....

A couple cool features....of perfect disk.... FULL MS support. Full RAID defragmentation, and Full network defragmentation...

 

just in case he wants to purchase it.

 

Thanks. Got it. Will try it out in a couple of Days. Small file size though 3.5 Megs