Defrag & Format ??s

A friend asked me a couple of questions the other day and I couldn't give him an intelligent answer so here I am asking all of you.

#1 - Can you defrag a computer too often?

#2 - What are the chances of doing harm to a hard drive if it has been formatted several times in just a few months?

Anything I would have told him would have been a WAG at best. We patiently await any comments.

TIA


Mike

 

Hiya indutch
These two questions that you're not going to get a solid answer for. Like you've done yourself....it's anyone's WAG.
As a short answer......I'd say there's little to no risk to defragging too much. As for formatting....I don't so much see the harm in it, as thinking that after so many......I'd probably give my hard drive an fdisk then reformat.
You'll get as varied advice as you would when asking whether to leave the computer on or turn it off.

Daizy

 

Hi Daizy,

Thanks for the quick response. I see ya 'made' Geek Member finally, but that don't make ya bad.

That is already more information than I could have given him. I didn't think you could defrag too much unless you spent an awful lot of a 24 hour day doing just that, over and over again.

I plan to print all of the responses I get here over the next few days and let him make his own decisions. I help him a lot with one thing and another but I'm not willing to take on the responsibility of breaking his box in time for me to replace it at Christmas. If anyone gets a new one, it will be me. (Read "me" as the missus.)

If anyone else has anything to say on these subjects we're all ears and thanks for the input.


Mike

 

indutch,

All I know is, that some weeks I defrag mine darn near every day, or several times in one day. Depending on how much creating, deleting, installing & uninstalling I do. Hasn't seemed to of hurt it any.

Not too long ago, I FDisked mine three times in one day. Don't ask me why. I forget why. Didn't seem to hurt it one bit.

 

I defrag my principle partitions every week.

Defragging, formatting and FDISK'ing do nothing special apart from what normal disk operations do anyway, they will not "harm" your disk any more than regular operations.

There is a specific kind of "low level format ", you can do this from most BIOS menus nowdays, this may have an effect on your disk only by marking defective sectors.

You can't really defrag too much anyway, if you did a full defrag straight after a previous one, then it would do nothing. The more times you defrag the less time each one takes.

 

Neither process can cause any damage.

 

Thanks to all

I will pass all of the above on and tell him that he can format and defrag to his heart's content. Or at least until his computer starts to smoke.

Thanks again.


Mike

 

Hi guys,

Don't forget that a HD has to work less after defragmenting. So, it will pay you back .

 

1. You can not defrag a drive to much. But why are you doing it so often? Just wondering.

2. Same thing here. Why are you formatting the drive so often. If he is having that many problems, maybe purchase a new drive.

Let me know.

Brian