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#46
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How Often Disk Defrag
On Tue, 06 Mar 2012 21:47:49 -0800, Ant wrote:
On 3/6/2012 12:24 PM PT, Char Jackson typed: Speaking of disk defragging in Windows 7. Is the internal the best one to use or is there a better third party (freeware preferred) to use? I won't presume to say which program or strategy is "best." I like to keep my partitions defragged beyond any real practical need, and I use Defraggler to do it. You will find a long list of free/cheap defragging tools he http://thedatalist.com/pages/Defragging_Tools.htm That is a lot. I will try those freewares. FYI, I have many big files like VMware Workstation's images. Let us know if you see a noticeable difference afterwards. I strongly suspect that you won't. Fragmentation just isn't the problem that it used to be. I haven't tried them yet, but Windows 7's disk defragger analysis show both my drives/partitions from 1% (main system drive and installed software)-4% (downloads, big VM images, archives, etc. in here) fragmented. That's not too bad, right? I assume I won't see noticeable improvements if I defragged them? *I* don't think you'll see any improvement, but my opinion isn't shared by all. In the end, it's up to you. -- Char Jackson |
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#47
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How Often Disk Defrag
On Tue, 06 Mar 2012 21:47:49 -0800, Ant wrote:
I haven't tried them yet, but Windows 7's disk defragger analysis show both my drives/partitions from 1% (main system drive and installed software)-4% (downloads, big VM images, archives, etc. in here) fragmented. That's not too bad, right? I assume I won't see noticeable improvements if I defragged them? I think that's a safe assumption. Windows 7's own recommendation is not to defrag if you're under 10%. -- Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA http://OakRoadSystems.com Shikata ga nai... |
#48
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How Often Disk Defrag
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. |
#49
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How Often Disk Defrag
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 |
#50
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How Often Disk Defrag
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. 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. |
#51
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How Often Disk Defrag
On 3/11/2012 2:04 PM, 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 I allow automatic defragmenting once a week and that seems to work well. Currently, the disk is marked as 0% fragmented. -- Jim Silverton Extraneous "not" in Reply To. |
#52
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How Often Disk Defrag
On 3/11/2012 3:45 PM, James Silverton wrote:
On 3/11/2012 2:04 PM, 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 I allow automatic defragmenting once a week and that seems to work well. Currently, the disk is marked as 0% fragmented. I defrag about once every two years and even then it seems to be a waste of time. As I check my performance before and after and I only get about a 1% improvement in disk speed. I don't think the bottleneck is the drives anymore, but rather the I/O speeds. -- Bill Gateway M465e ('06 era) - Thunderbird v3.0 Centrino Core2 Duo 2GHz - 1.5GB - Windows 7 |
#53
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How Often Disk Defrag
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 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 same little defrag you do frequently will be incorporated in the big defrag you do once in awhile. What's defragged a little is still going to be what pends until you get around to doing the big defrag. If your hard disk is 10% fragmented, that's still going to be there if you wait around to do a defrag when it gets up to 50% fragmented (one-fifth of that 50% is the original 10% that you left around waiting until you do the big defrag). You're not changing how much you defrag by waiting. A fragmented file will take longer to load (if the fragments are in different cylinders versus, say, a 10-fragment file with all fragments in the same cylinder). A big defrag is going to include all those little defrags you could've done earlier. So by waiting to do a big defrag, you've lengthened over how long that file opened slower. 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. 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? 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. 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. With little defrags you minimize the impact on your host regarding responsiveness: the impact is short-lived. The little defrag takes a 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 anything by waiting. With fragmented files, the heads are going to move around MORE to find all those fragments which means there is MORE head assembly wear for all those extra movements between the infrequent big defrags. Alas, there is no good measuring tool to determine when the wear from a little defrag will compensate for the wear from moving the heads around to find all the fragments; if there were, all the defraggers would include such a measurement to provide a guage by which to measure when a defrag would REDUCE subsequent head wear. 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. 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 unfragmented files is more than the overall head wear for infrequent big defrags along with increased head movement to access the fragmented files between those big defrags. The little defrags are still incorporated in the big defrags so you haven't saved on head wear there. It's *between* the defrags to access unfragmented files were you save on head wear. It's not whether little defrags cause more wear than big defrags (which has yet to be empirically proven). It's about how much you reduce the wear from accessing fragmented files (by making them unfragmented) and when that reduction in file access wear exceeds the wear generated by the defrags (a bunch of little ones or a few big ones). 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 you might have some measure by which you could determine if all the head movements for a defrag are less than the increased head movements to access fragmented files. I've trialed a few defraggers but haven't seen any that give you a decent measure of when you should defrag (and a percentage level of fragmentation does not tell you the defrag's head movements will be less than those for accessing the fragmented files). You'd need to record how many head movements there were in a defrag. Then monitor the head movements incurred ONLY to access the fragments of a file thereafter. When the amount of head movement to access the fragmented files got higher than the head movement incurred by a defrag then you know you finally got to a ROI point in your hard disk maintenance. |
#54
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How Often Disk Defrag
On Sun, 11 Mar 2012 15:54:10 -0500, BillW50 wrote:
On 3/11/2012 3:45 PM, James Silverton wrote: On 3/11/2012 2:04 PM, 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 I allow automatic defragmenting once a week and that seems to work well. Currently, the disk is marked as 0% fragmented. I defrag about once every two years and even then it seems to be a waste of time. As I check my performance before and after and I only get about a 1% improvement in disk speed. I don't think the bottleneck is the drives anymore, but rather the I/O speeds. I defrag because old habits are hard to stop. Maybe when there were 40MG HDD, defrag made a difference. I am so stupid, I purchased O&O defrag which runs in the background. My disk is always zero % fragmented. I sleep better knowing everything is in order. I could sleep just as well if my HDD was 99% fragmented also |
#55
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How Often Disk Defrag
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. 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. ^^^^^^^ Best answer. -- Char Jackson |
#56
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How Often Disk Defrag
In message , VanguardLH
writes: 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 Agreed. On the other hand, a rule of thumb has its place. [] 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 Doing frequent defrags will slightly increase the defragging of files that will be rewritten - or erased - between mini-defrags. How significant an effect this is, I haven't a clue. [] -- J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)Ar@T0H+Sh0!:`)DNAf All that glitters has a high refractive index. |
#57
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How Often Disk Defrag
On 3/11/2012 11:18 AM, 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. You shouldn't defrag SSD at all. |
#58
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How Often Disk Defrag
On Sun, 11 Mar 2012 16:45:14 -0400, James Silverton wrote:
On 3/11/2012 2:04 PM, 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 I allow automatic defragmenting once a week and that seems to work well. Currently, the disk is marked as 0% fragmented. Work well how? How fragmented can a drive get in a week? Or is this some kind of obsessive-compulsive thing you have? ;-) Stef |
#59
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How Often Disk Defrag
On 12/03/2012 06:21, Stefan Patric wrote:
On Sun, 11 Mar 2012 16:45:14 -0400, James Silverton wrote: On 3/11/2012 2:04 PM, 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 I allow automatic defragmenting once a week and that seems to work well. Currently, the disk is marked as 0% fragmented. Work well how? How fragmented can a drive get in a week? Or is this some kind of obsessive-compulsive thing you have? ;-) Or it could be compulsive-obsessive. -- choro Stef |
#60
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How Often Disk Defrag
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. I checked a W7 system yesterday. It has been in use as a server for over a year and had never been defragmented. Analyse returned 3% fragmented on the main disc. Steve -- Neural Network Software. http://www.npsl1.com EasyNN-plus. Neural Networks plus. http://www.easynn.com SwingNN. Forecast with Neural Networks. http://www.swingnn.com JustNN. Just Neural Networks. http://www.justnn.com |
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