How often do you think a hard drive should be defragmented? Is that how often you do it? My sister was always on me to do it when I got my first real computer. Now out of habit I do it every week. My computer at work has it in the task scheduler for every thursday.
If I miss a defrag I get all oogy and nervous.
So am I normal or what?
Never. I did it once or twice probably a few years ago, but IMHO its just not worth the effort.
If anything, you’re doing it a little too often. Not that the defragging itself is a bad thing, but there’s always that little chance that there could be a crash or power outage during the defrag process, and you could lose everything. But then again, if you back it all up, no problem.
I would defrag whenever I noticed any slowdown in HD performance, or if it sounds like the HD is doing a little too much work than it should be for the task at hand.
[hijack] I say “I would defrag” because I don’t have a defrag program, and can’t seem to find one for Mac OS 9. Little help, anyone?[/hijack]
I recommend doing it after you install or uninstall a lot of files. Or once a month, no more, no less.
Windows XP automatically recommends defragmentation at particular times, although I’m not aware of any other OS that does that.
I have no evidence to back up my personal opinion, but I tend to defrag maybe once every 2-6 months, only because I very, very rarely install new software or otherwise add or remove data on my PC.
You can pre-defrag with most MS defrag programs and it will tell you whether the procedure is indicated.
I haven’t had much luck de-fragging NT 4. MS does not include a defrag program with this OS and the few I’ve tried didn’t seem to do much good.
I may just be taking a shot in the dark, here, but IIRC, neither MS NT 4 nor Mac OS 9 comes with a defrag program because, in both cases, the way their file systems work, they don’t fragment files. In other words, when files are written to the hard drive, they’re always written into contiguous empty space.
In Windows XP, when you launch the defrag program, it gives you the option to “analyze” the file system - it then tells you whether it needs defragging or not. So, instead of defragging every week, just “analyze” once in a while. You’ll soon get some sense of how often you need to check it.
" In Windows XP, when you launch the defrag program, it gives you the option to “analyze” the file system - it then tells you whether it needs defragging or not. So, instead of defragging every week, just “analyze” once in a while. "
Most versions of windows do that analysis first for me…but I prefer a third party program to do defrag & maintenance. Because they also defrag the registry, which needs it too. First time I did that my registry was three megs after defragging it was only one & a half megs. It does it by restarting your computer. OTherwise I defrag whenever I think it would speed things up.
I believe OS 9 (and 8.6, etc. etc.) could use defragging. I just never did it. I am using OS X now, I am not sure if it needs defragging.
I defrag my Windows 98 PC every once in a while. In a very LONG while.
Whenever you start cursing at your slow HDD access, or the HDD has to chew away like it’s eating Grape Nuts just to load a simple program. Generally, I end up doing it about once a month. I’d like to do it more often, but I leave my computer to do stuff overnight, so I have to pick a night when nothing important is happening. If you don’t do that much disk intensive work, you could probably get along fine defragging once every few months. If you play with large video or audio files, or frequently install or delete programs, more frequent defragmentation would be required.
Oh, and in regards to file systems that don’t fragment: There’s no such thing. NTFS does get fragmented more gradually than FAT, but the effects of fragmentation are MUCH more noticable. Diskeeper was supposedly a decent NT4 defragmenter, I believe. As far as I know, the same holds true for file systems used in other operating systems. There’s simply no way to, in a disk that isn’t practically empty, save files contiguously and NEVER have them fragment due to changing size.
I stand corrected: FDISK is absolutely correct. Do a Google search for “ntfs fragment files” (without the quote marks), and you’ll get a bunch of hits with some interesting articles about how different file systems fragment files, why it’s difficult to defrag some of them, and so on. Probably more info than most of us want to deal with, of course!
Can someone tell me HOW to defrag my comp?
I use Executive Software’s Diskkeeper to defrag, because it does a better job than Windows. How often? Well, let’s just say that when I did it this morning, the analysis lit up like a Christmas tree: yellow for swap file, red for fragmented files, dark blue for files, light blue for directores, white for empty space. It was all over the place.
Broken Doll, if you have Windows98 go to Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Disk Defragmenter. The other versions of Windows should be similar.
Does anyone else like watching the graphic of the defragmenting process?
Far more often than I do. Last time I ran it the disk was something like 37% fragmented 
chula: Sign of either a true geek, or hopeless boredom. 
When de-fragging the HD was a new skill/ability to me, I used to sit and watch it (well, over the top of whatever book/game manual I was reading, usually) as well.
Of course, we’re talking about a 250MB HD here, ~90% of which was DOS apps/games anyway.
Nowadays, I start the thing right before I’m going out, or going to bed. (And then get all paranoid because I don’t have a UPS.)
There’s something so satisfying about the way it determines what needs to go where and then moves it. I wish someone could do that for my apartment, or my mind.
Ooh, I just defragged the computer. Took about 2 hours, half of which I spent staring, mesmerized at the graphic.
I almost never defrag my harddrive.
… 'course, given how much I mess with my computer, odds are any given hard drive will get reformatted every few months anyway.
my kids gather around and watch the monitor every time I de-frag.
Sometimes I put on the Sabre Dance to accompany the graphics.