How Often Disk Defrag

On Tue, 13 Mar 2012 19:17:33 -0400, WaIIy wrote:

On Sun, 11 Mar 2012 11:41:42 -0700, Ken Blake wrote:

On Sun, 11 Mar 2012 11:18:10 -0500, joshuareen
wrote:

Karen F wrote on 03/04/2012 08:09 ET :
How often should you use Disk Defrag? I now have mine set for once a
month. Thanks.

Yes, it is well to defrag every month.



I completely disagree. First, in Windows 7, defragging is almost never
needed.

Based on your magic 8 Ball or what ?



Secondly, if you do defrag, there's no answer to the "how often"
question that's right for everyone. It depends on how you use your
computer and it depends on how much you use your computer.


throw your computer out and you will never have to defrag. that is
the only correct answer. otherwise its a personal choice. if it
makes you happy defrag whenever you get the urge.

On 3/13/2012 6:25 PM, KissyFur wrote:
On Tue, 13 Mar 2012 19:17:33 -0400, wrote:

On Sun, 11 Mar 2012 11:41:42 -0700, Ken wrote:

On Sun, 11 Mar 2012 11:18:10 -0500, joshuareen
wrote:

Karen F wrote on 03/04/2012 08:09 ET :
How often should you use Disk Defrag? I now have mine set for once a
month. Thanks.

Yes, it is well to defrag every month.



I completely disagree. First, in Windows 7, defragging is almost never
needed.

Based on your magic 8 Ball or what ?



Secondly, if you do defrag, there's no answer to the "how often"
question that's right for everyone. It depends on how you use your
computer and it depends on how much you use your computer.


throw your computer out and you will never have to defrag. that is
the only correct answer. otherwise its a personal choice. if it
makes you happy defrag whenever you get the urge.

That's a pretty ignorant reply.

"WaIIy" wrote in message
...

On Sun, 11 Mar 2012 11:41:42 -0700, Ken Blake
wrote:

On Sun, 11 Mar 2012 11:18:10 -0500, joshuareen
wrote:

Karen F wrote on 03/04/2012 08:09 ET :
How often should you use Disk Defrag? I now have mine set for
once a
month. Thanks.

Yes, it is well to defrag every month.



I completely disagree. First, in Windows 7, defragging is almost
never
needed.

Based on your magic 8 Ball or what ?

He sounds like a Mac user.

On Sun, 11 Mar 2012 15:59:36 -0500, VanguardLH wrote:

Stefan Patric wrote:

On Sun, 11 Mar 2012 11:18:10 -0500, joshuareen wrote:

Karen F wrote on 03/04/2012 08:09 ET :
How often should you use Disk Defrag? I now have mine set for once
a month. Thanks.

Yes, it is well to defrag every month.

Such an absolute statement is misleading. If a drive doesn't need
defragging, whether it's been a month or several since the last one,
why defrag it? And overly defragging puts extra wear and tear on the
drive, too. Plus, it's a waste of time.

Stef

Comes down to whether you're the type of person that prefers incremental
maintenance to keep things smooth or prefers to wait to do major or
catastrophic repairs before which you incurred less than stellar
operation. A little at a time or a lot all at once. You could pickup
each sock you drop in your bedroom and put it away or you could wait
several months and pick them all up to get rid of the huge mess.

You've missed the whole point. I AM talking about regular, periodic
maintenance, i.e. defragging, just ONLY when it's needed, and not some
pulled-out-of-the-air schedule (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.) based on
nothing more than a regular, recurring time period.

Why do you think defraggers have an analyzer tool separate from the
defragging part? It's there so the user can test the drive for the degree
of fragmentation, and decide if they want to defrag.


You won't be saving on disk wear by doing the major defrag at infrequent
intervals versus doing minor defrags at frequent intervals. Do a lot
all at once but infrequently or a little each time and frequently.
Please explain how there is any difference in disk wear. If left, the
[snip]

The more the drive head moves, the more wear and tear. The more you
defrag, the more the head moves. Even if the defragging takes less time,
because there's less fragmentation, the head still has to move numerous
times to accomplish the defragging whether there are a few fragmented
files or many. It's not like the software "know" innately which files
are fragmented, and only works on those files. It has to read all the
files each time you defrag.

Now, to be fair, I doubt with today's drives this "extra" head wear is
all that significant. The user will probably replace the whole computer
and the drive long before the drive is even close to failure.


This argument has been used many times in the past and yet no one
presents any empirical study to prove a single huge defrag puts less
wear on the hard disk than a bunch of smaller defrags. It's become
urban legend or wives' tale proliferated by repetition without proof.

I haven't been unable to find any such studies either. But the engineers
I know and have talked to over the years, and who maintain systems and
have seen every kind of failure, have all told me the same thing: that
excessive defragging reduces a drives life. But then excessive reads and
writes of any kind reduces head life, doesn't it? However, with
defragging you have a choice of how much to do it.

Many of those that do periodic defrags are scheduling them to run when
they are not at or using their computer, so what functionality is lost?

None.

It's not like they care about the reduction in responsiveness of their
host during a little defrag because they're not at their computer to use
it. Tis easy to schedule a tiny defrag that typically takes less than
half an hour than wait for months to do a defrag and not be sure when it
will complete which means it could be still running when you return to
your host or interfere with other scheduled tasks.

"Tiny defrag?" "Half an hour?" I think you have misinterpreted my
advice on defragging. I just defragged a business desktop that had never
been defragged or "cleaned" since its purchase 7 or 8 years ago. The
40GB drive was about 60% full. Cleaning with Windows' XP Disk Cleaner
took about 40 minutes--longest I've ever experienced--and the defrag,
with the included XP one, about 45. This was the worse case of
fragmentation I've ever seen in a user desktop. So, what do you mean
when you say, tiny defrag? What percent fragmentation? Are we talking
enterprise servers or average user desktops?


Since Windows XP, automatic defragmentation has been part of Windows.
It's running even when you don't run your defragger. Of course, the
Windows-supplied auto-defragger has different goals than an on-demand
defragger but your hard disk is still getting defragged a little at a
time while Windows is running. In fact, because of this background
defragmentation, it is recommended you disable it if you use intend to
frequently defrag with a 3rd party tool. Since each defragger has
different algorithms for best placement of files, one will undo the
defrag by another.

Prefer to defrag manually. I run my Windows systems very lean anyway
with as few background tasks as possible to improve performance,
increase available RAM, etc. Windows isn't all that efficient, ya' know.


With little defrags you minimize the impact on your host regarding
responsiveness: the impact is short-lived. The little defrag takes a

This is true. Less fragmentation takes less time to defrag.

little time so it is easy to schedule and permit it sufficient time to
complete so it doesn't interfere with later scheduled jobs and it won't
be running when you return to your host. The little defragmentation
will still be there for a big infrequent defrag so you haven't saved

How "big" and "infrequent" do you mean? None of my Windows systems every
get past about 15 to 20% fragmented before being defragged.


The only way the argument wins for doing infrequent big defrags is to
not do them at all; i.e., push out the defrag interval so far that added
disk wear for ANY defragging is insignificant to the MTBF of the device.
That is, do frequent little defrags or infrequent big defrags OR don't
defrag at all.

Pointless hyperbole.

Rather than regurgitate this repeated myth, perhaps someone can present
real empirical data (laboratory testing) showing overall head wear for
frequent small defrags along with reduced head movement to access
[snip]

I don't think anyone really cares enough to run tests. The drive
manufacturers would certainly be happy if drives failed faster. Then
you'd have to buy another. Good for the bottom line. ;-)


Do you know of a tool that records a history of how often the heads have
to move to different cylinders both during a defrag operation and also
outside of that defrag (to measure access of fragmented files)? Then

No. Have never come across anything like that. Doesn't mean it isn't
"out there" somewhere.

Stef

On Wed, 14 Mar 2012 04:59:43 +0000 (UTC), Stefan Patric
wrote:

[snip]

The more the drive head moves, the more wear and tear. The more you
defrag, the more the head moves. Even if the defragging takes less time,
because there's less fragmentation, the head still has to move numerous
times to accomplish the defragging whether there are a few fragmented
files or many. It's not like the software "know" innately which files
are fragmented, and only works on those files. It has to read all the
files each time you defrag.

Actually, that information is in the directory entries. If the
file does not have to be worked on, then it need not be read.

[snip]

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

Stefan Patric wrote:

VanguardLH wrote:

Stefan Patric wrote:

joshuareen wrote:

Karen F wrote:

How often should you use Disk Defrag? I now have mine set for once
a month. Thanks.

Yes, it is well to defrag every month.

Such an absolute statement is misleading. If a drive doesn't need
defragging, whether it's been a month or several since the last one,
why defrag it? And overly defragging puts extra wear and tear on the
drive, too. Plus, it's a waste of time.

Stef

Comes down to whether you're the type of person that prefers incremental
maintenance to keep things smooth or prefers to wait to do major or
catastrophic repairs before which you incurred less than stellar
operation. A little at a time or a lot all at once. You could pickup
each sock you drop in your bedroom and put it away or you could wait
several months and pick them all up to get rid of the huge mess.

You've missed the whole point. I AM talking about regular, periodic
maintenance, i.e. defragging, just ONLY when it's needed,

Yet, as shown here, NO ONE knows just when a defrag's cost will result
in a savings (wear, electricity, or by whatever measurement) over
continuing to access fragmented files. Saying that you know when to
defrag is no more steeped in science or proof than someone who admits
they don't know and just goes ahead to schedule the defrag anyway. You
don't know "when it's needed". You just wait until the percentage of
fragmentation gets above some arbitrary threshold upon which you've
chosen (by the way, some defraggers can "schedule" themself to defrag
when fragmentation gets above some threshold, again, arbitrarily chosen
by the user). The other user admits they don't know "when it's needed"
so figure they'll just run it or schedule it at short intervals since
they don't perceive the added wear (which may not exceed the added wear
to access fragmented files) as a risk to the survival of their device.

Your measure is just as arbitrary and not based on valid premises as is
someone else making an arbitrary choice of when to schedule a defrag.

and not some pulled-out-of-the-air schedule (daily, weekly, monthly,
etc.) based on nothing more than a regular, recurring time period.

You're just "pulling out of the air" some fragmentation threshold upon
which you've arbitrarily chosen is when you will defrag. Say it tells
you there is 20% fragmentation. Okay, so how many fragments for each
file to which they belong reside outside the same cylinder? How big or
small are those fragments? How big is the gap between the fragments
(i.e., the size of the unallocated space or allocated space for other
files between the fragments getting moved)?

I tell you, as my employee, that there 10% of a pile of 1000 blocks are
the wrong color and you have to separate them. It's an easy job if
they're the size and weight of 3-gram Lego blocks but a hell of a lot
more work if they're the size and weight of 40-pound construction
blocks. The 10% figure is worthless as to how much work it takes to
segregate the different colored blocks.

Why do you think defraggers have an analyzer tool separate from the
defragging part? It's there so the user can test the drive for the degree
of fragmentation, and decide if they want to defrag.

As I stated, showing the level of current fragmentation does not
indicate how long you get an ROI on wear for defragging those files.
You will add more disk wear with the defrag (several small ones or a few
big ones) but at some point you are hoping that the saved wear from
accessing defragmented files exceeds the wear by the defrag and
accessing fragmented files. Showing the current level of fragmentation
gives you no usable information to know when that ROI point will be met.

I gave up a long time ago on using the percentage of fragmentation or
the number of fragments to give a measure of how "bad" was the state of
my hard disk. 10 fragments that are huge in size (many mega- or
gigabytes) will take a lot longer than 1000 fragments that are 15KB in
size. One time you'll see 10% fragmentation or a count of 50 fragments
and the defrag takes under 10 minutes, or less. Another time you have
5% fragmentation or a count of 10 fragments but the defrag takes an
hour, or more. Depends on how big are those fragments that get moved
around to get rid of the gaps. Obviously moving 10 fragments where the
smallest fragment is 100MB (1GB, or more, total) will involve more
movement than 1000 fragments where the largest was 10KB (10MB, or less,
total). The level of fragmentation doesn't tell you how much you will
be moving.

The level of fragmentation may give a clue as to why a file takes longer
to load (assuming you load the entire file) but it doesn't tell you when
to defragment or how much will get moved (which equates to time to do
the defrag).

I have a data disk where, for example, there are virtual machine files
that are 8GB in size (but could go up to 16GB). Just defragging to get
rid of a single gap (i.e., there are 2 fragments for the huge file)
would involve a LOT of head movement to rearrange the huge chunks just
to get rid of one gap. The defragger might say there is only 1%
fragmentation or 12 fragments over there but that gives absolutely no
clue as to how many bytes are going to get moved which equates into how
long the defrag will take.

The level of fragmentation (percentage or fragment count) really doesn't
provide you a decent gauge to figure out when you should defrag.

You won't be saving on disk wear by doing the major defrag at infrequent
intervals versus doing minor defrags at frequent intervals. Do a lot
all at once but infrequently or a little each time and frequently.
Please explain how there is any difference in disk wear. If left, the
[snip]

The more the drive head moves, the more wear and tear. The more you
defrag, the more the head moves. Even if the defragging takes less time,
because there's less fragmentation, the head still has to move numerous
times to accomplish the defragging whether there are a few fragmented
files or many. It's not like the software "know" innately which files
are fragmented, and only works on those files. It has to read all the
files each time you defrag.

Geez, what defragger do you use? The ones that I use do a scan before
defrag so they can build up a list of eligible files for the type of
defrag operation that you choose to run. If you use the same defrag
algorithm each time, it shouldn't be moving all files but just the ones
that are fragmented (and perhaps have more fragments than a threshold
you configure in the defragger, if an available option). The only
non-fragmented files that should get moved are to make room, say, for
the MFT reserve area or pagefile.

If you keep switching defrag algorithms, like using one defragger for
daily defrags and a different defragger for monthly or yearly defrags,
then you will get a lot of movement. You are using tools whose
author(s) make decisions on what they believe is best defragging. One
defragger will undo "best" placement done by another defragger that
decides a different placement is better. You need to use just ONE
defragger (and why if you use a 3rd party defragger then you need to
disable the one included in Windows).

In message , VanguardLH
writes:
[]
hour, or more. Depends on how big are those fragments that get moved
around to get rid of the gaps. Obviously moving 10 fragments where the
smallest fragment is 100MB (1GB, or more, total) will involve more
movement than 1000 fragments where the largest was 10KB (10MB, or less,
total). The level of fragmentation doesn't tell you how much you will
be moving.

The level of fragmentation may give a clue as to why a file takes longer
to load (assuming you load the entire file) but it doesn't tell you when
to defragment or how much will get moved (which equates to time to do
the defrag).
[]
At least one of the defraggers I have has the ability to set a threshold
on fragment _size_.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)Ar@T0H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

....Every morning is the dawn of a new error...

[about whether disk defrag is scheduled in Windows by default]

On Tue, 13 Mar 2012 10:23:10 -0700, Gene E. Bloch wrote:

On 3/13/2012, Zaphod Beeblebrox posted:
In article ,
lid says...
I have a fresh install of Win 7 Ultimate x64 full retail here
and
defrag is scheduled to run every Wednesday morning at 1:00 AM. It's in
Scheduled Tasks, along with a bunch of other stuff that I didn't put
there.

I have the same task for the same day/time, and have seen it on clean
installs of Win7 Pro x86 OEM, Pro x64 OEM, and Enterprise x64.

I said in another post that on my computer, Defrag as a service is set
to Manual start and isn't running (i.e., wasn't running when I looked).
I thought it meant it wasn't happening here.

But the above remarks made me look at Task Scheduler, and lo!, Defrag
is in there, scheduled to run at 1:00 AM every Wednesday of every Week.
It last ran at 3/07/2012 19:04:43, according to the entry in the
Scheduler.

I've got 43 tasks, but none of them looks like defragger, unless it
has another name that I'm failing to recognize. I can't be certain,
but I'm pretty sure I never disabled it. If I had, I would have been
unlikely to delete it, but would most likely simply have scheduled it
for far in the future (as I did with the annoying Java Update).

Maybe this is another difference in Home Premium? Do those of you
with defrag enabled by default have Professional or Ultimate?



--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com
Shikata ga nai...

In article ,
says...

[about whether disk defrag is scheduled in Windows by default]

On Tue, 13 Mar 2012 10:23:10 -0700, Gene E. Bloch wrote:

On 3/13/2012, Zaphod Beeblebrox posted:
In article ,
lid says...
I have a fresh install of Win 7 Ultimate x64 full retail here
and
defrag is scheduled to run every Wednesday morning at 1:00 AM. It's in
Scheduled Tasks, along with a bunch of other stuff that I didn't put
there.

I have the same task for the same day/time, and have seen it on clean
installs of Win7 Pro x86 OEM, Pro x64 OEM, and Enterprise x64.

I said in another post that on my computer, Defrag as a service is set
to Manual start and isn't running (i.e., wasn't running when I looked).
I thought it meant it wasn't happening here.

But the above remarks made me look at Task Scheduler, and lo!, Defrag
is in there, scheduled to run at 1:00 AM every Wednesday of every Week.
It last ran at 3/07/2012 19:04:43, according to the entry in the
Scheduler.

I've got 43 tasks, but none of them looks like defragger, unless it
has another name that I'm failing to recognize. I can't be certain,
but I'm pretty sure I never disabled it. If I had, I would have been
unlikely to delete it, but would most likely simply have scheduled it
for far in the future (as I did with the annoying Java Update).

Maybe this is another difference in Home Premium? Do those of you
with defrag enabled by default have Professional or Ultimate?

Both Professional and Enterprise here, I'll check a Home Premium
tonight (if I can pry it out of my son's hands long enough).

--
Zaphod

"So [Trillian], two heads is what does it for a girl?"
"...Anything else [Zaphod]'s got two of?"
- Arthur Dent

"Stan Brown" wrote in message ...
[about whether disk defrag is scheduled in Windows by default]

On Tue, 13 Mar 2012 10:23:10 -0700, Gene E. Bloch wrote:

On 3/13/2012, Zaphod Beeblebrox posted:
In article ,
lid says...
I have a fresh install of Win 7 Ultimate x64 full retail here
and
defrag is scheduled to run every Wednesday morning at 1:00 AM. It's in
Scheduled Tasks, along with a bunch of other stuff that I didn't put
there.

I have the same task for the same day/time, and have seen it on clean
installs of Win7 Pro x86 OEM, Pro x64 OEM, and Enterprise x64.

I said in another post that on my computer, Defrag as a service is set
to Manual start and isn't running (i.e., wasn't running when I looked).
I thought it meant it wasn't happening here.

But the above remarks made me look at Task Scheduler, and lo!, Defrag
is in there, scheduled to run at 1:00 AM every Wednesday of every Week.
It last ran at 3/07/2012 19:04:43, according to the entry in the
Scheduler.

I've got 43 tasks, but none of them looks like defragger, unless it
has another name that I'm failing to recognize. I can't be certain,
but I'm pretty sure I never disabled it. If I had, I would have been
unlikely to delete it, but would most likely simply have scheduled it
for far in the future (as I did with the annoying Java Update).

Maybe this is another difference in Home Premium? Do those of you
with defrag enabled by default have Professional or Ultimate?


Mine is here (Win 7 Pro):

Control Panel(icon view) Administrative tools
Task Scheduler Task Scheduler Library
Microsoft Windows Defrag.

VanguardLH wrote:


You're just "pulling out of the air" some fragmentation threshold upon
which you've arbitrarily chosen is when you will defrag.

My metric is pretty simple.

"Man, this computer is a pig today."

That's when I know it's time. If certain operations have become
unbearably slow, it's time for a cleanup. I did this yesterday
on the machine I'm typing this on, and my log shows the time
before was Oct29,2011. So it's been like a bit over four months
between "spring cleaning" attempts.

*******

And I don't just defrag, I lay the file system down again with
Robocopy. That works on WinXP. I doubt that would be safe with
Windows 7, because of all the tricks Windows 7 has.

And doing a backup and restore, using Windows 7 System Image,
won't "clean" anything, because as far as I know, a VSS based
copy would carefully preserve the fragmentation state of the
computer. Many backup programs will be VSS based, so you'd
suspect they would behave in a similar manner. A program
like the old NTBackup might be different, but again,
my suspicion is, if you brought forward a copy of NTBackup
and used it, it would just trash Windows 7 and the restored
copy would be a mess.

So I don't actually know of a good way (guaranteed) to clean up
Windows 7, like I do with the WinXP machine I'm typing on.

And that makes me "perfectly happy", to use that Windows 7
built-in defragmenter. My scheduled defragmentation on the
Windows 7 laptop, never gets to run on that machine, and
when I check manually, there really isn't enough fragmentation
on there to worry about. The Windows 7 machine was slow from
day #1, so it's not like I'd notice if it got slower. On WinXP,
I can feel that "take out the garbage" effect a lot more.

Paul

On Wed, 14 Mar 2012 04:59:43 +0000 (UTC), Stefan Patric
wrote:


The more the drive head moves, the more wear and tear. The more you
defrag, the more the head moves. Even if the defragging takes less time,
because there's less fragmentation, the head still has to move numerous
times to accomplish the defragging whether there are a few fragmented
files or many.


If the drive is greatly fragmented, it takes more head movement to
accomplish the defragging, but the *result* of degragging is that the
heads then have to move less. The general view is that it's somewhere
around a wash.

On 14/03/2012 10:59 AM, Ken Blake wrote:
On Wed, 14 Mar 2012 04:59:43 +0000 (UTC), Stefan Patric
wrote:


The more the drive head moves, the more wear and tear. The more you
defrag, the more the head moves. Even if the defragging takes less time,
because there's less fragmentation, the head still has to move numerous
times to accomplish the defragging whether there are a few fragmented
files or many.


If the drive is greatly fragmented, it takes more head movement to
accomplish the defragging, but the *result* of degragging is that the
heads then have to move less. The general view is that it's somewhere
around a wash.


You let the machine defrag while you are doing something else. You do do
something else once in a while, no?

;-)

Wolf K.

On Wed, 14 Mar 2012 11:08:01 -0400, Wolf K
wrote:

On 14/03/2012 10:59 AM, Ken Blake wrote:
On Wed, 14 Mar 2012 04:59:43 +0000 (UTC), Stefan Patric
wrote:


The more the drive head moves, the more wear and tear. The more you
defrag, the more the head moves. Even if the defragging takes less time,
because there's less fragmentation, the head still has to move numerous
times to accomplish the defragging whether there are a few fragmented
files or many.


If the drive is greatly fragmented, it takes more head movement to
accomplish the defragging, but the *result* of degragging is that the
heads then have to move less. The general view is that it's somewhere
around a wash.


You let the machine defrag while you are doing something else. You do do
something else once in a while, no?



??? I've read your two sentences four or five times now,but I still
have no idea why you think your comment has anything to do with the
point I was making.

On Wed, 14 Mar 2012 05:50:57 -0400, Stan Brown
wrote:

I've got 43 tasks, but none of them looks like defragger, unless it
has another name that I'm failing to recognize. I can't be certain,
but I'm pretty sure I never disabled it. If I had, I would have been
unlikely to delete it, but would most likely simply have scheduled it
for far in the future (as I did with the annoying Java Update).

Maybe this is another difference in Home Premium? Do those of you
with defrag enabled by default have Professional or Ultimate?

I have a mix of Home Premium and Ultimate. Both types have the defrag
task here.

--

Char Jackson