Defrag every day, will it hurt?

All I use my computer for is sending email and surfing the web. At the end of the day, I notice my computer slow down alot. I check my drive and it's only 3-5% fragmented. I defrag and it speeds up noticable.
If I defrag every day, will that weare out my computer faster? Does it have any negitive side effects form defraging more oftain then if I dont? Thank you, Chirs.

 

Daily defragging isn't necessary, but if you have the time, it can't hurt.

 

That was the point. It shouldn't be nesasarry, but my computer slows down twards the end of the day. If I defrag, it speeds back up, so on my computer, it is nesasarry.

I'm wondering if I defrag once or twice a day, does that put more whare on the drive?

Thanks for replying.

 

The need for defragging is telling you that there is something not quite right. Some of my thoughts:
A program you run doesn't like it's files fragmented (some are set as immovable). See what happens if you don't run individual programs.
You are running out of hard drive space. Do a clean up and make space.
Your RAM is getting overloaded and using the page file/swap file, which itself is fragmenting, or fragmenting other files. Are some programs overloading your RAM /too many running at once? Run the System Monitor.
Is a program putting a lot of files on the drive and then removing them each day?

3% is a lot in one day.

Matt
PS I haven't heard of defragging being detremental.

 

Have plenty of space on this drive. I have mine set up to only have systray and explorer on start up. I don't run programs that require large files.
Was on the computer most of the day, it's around 7% now.

I installed a really cool editing tool today. One thing it does is set the open sector size the HD looks for when putting programs back on the drive. Supoised to help in limiting the fragmenting.

It also makes windows write to the RAM completely before it ever accesses the swap file. I will see if that has any effect.

I have 511mb of DDR installed.

 

I'm using win 98. I'll try and reboot when I slow down.

 

Nothing wrong with a reboot, a good diskcleanup and defrag on a daily basis. I have been doing it for about 3 years now.

You have 98, might want to try the winme defrag, you will see the same GUI, but after the first time it runs, it is lots faster. Normally defrag about 60Gb in about 3 - 5 minutes.

Have not checked lately so hope one of these links is still valid.

1st. Two versions here normal and one that installs itself. Near the bottom. http://surecool.com/download.htm
2nd. http://members.cox.net/scotterpops/enhancements/enhancements9c.html

3rd. http://homepages.msn.com/WindowsWay/terrywitt/defrag.html


4. http://www.ematic.com/techpost/files/

5. http://www.mesich.com/Defrag.html [ It will write over your current version of Defrag renaming it Defrag.old. If for some reason you experience problems or wish to have your old Defrag back you can simply delete the defrag.exe and rename defrag.old to defrag.exe]

 

Totally a waste of time!

Unless you have a server of some type with multiuser access with a lot of data entry.

I do it from once a month or 6 or 8 weeks.

And yes in theroy it will hurt.

During a defragmentation every single sector of the HD is read then files are intensively moved around. Same for Scandisk with surface scan. Nessesary sometimes and good to do for peace of mind every few months but not everyday! Nothing else causes this intensity of HD R/W!

Defragmenting a HD probably causes more wear and tear than a normal user in normal use would probably do in a year!

Even if you didn't defrag for a year you would probably not notice it when you did!

Mattman is correct, if your computer slows down at the end of a day and it is disk related it is probably because of a memory leak causing high pagefile use. A reboot will also clear this.

Spend your time keeping the system clean of Viri, Spy/Adware OS exploits and unnessesary startup programs.

Come on!

Mike

 

Never will be in my book!

And yes it is suppost to put wear on the hdd. I say it is less than that one would get with fragmented programs. Talking 98 of coarse. Still have 2.1 and 8.4 hdds that still work. Just my 2¢ worth.

 

Some things to help keep ware & tear down on a HD. At least in 98

1--Keep the C: drive to a minimun size needed to hold the OS. The larger the drive the more work for defrag.

2--Set the swap file to a minimim size and on a partition other than C: And if possible get at the front of the partition. This helps to keep fragmentation down considerably.

3--Shutdown that useless Taskmonitor and empty the Applog folder which do nothing other than overwork defrag everytime.

4--Then defrag will only really be needed when adding or removing programs.

5--And MOST of all stick with just one defrag program. If you use MS Defrag then stick with it. If you use something like Norton SpeedDisk then stick with it. They do thing quite differently.

Hey Train

I thought that I was the only one still using ancient but still very uselfull hardware ? Up until I got this new fancy HD I still had an OLD 450megger as a swapfile.

BillyBob

 

The 2.1 JTS hdd comes in handy when I do some testing, like using diskedit on XP then seeing what chkdsk comes up with. So far chkdsk is flakey.

BillyBob
Good post there, but I can and do run this thing ragged at times. OK, so push it then. So, because of that a daily defrag is about or is needed.

 

I have a program called Diskeeper that is one of the best defraggers around.It notifies me to defrag almost every day.If this hurts the H.D. why would it tell me to do this.If it messed up the H.D. they wouldnt sell many applications of it I would think.

 

Hi all.

Should you defrag every day. Sure, why not. Does it harm your hard drive. Sure does. Will it cause you any problems. None. Does it make your computer faster. Sure does. Does it matter. No.

Ever wonder why defrag got to be a regular thing?

When the PC computers were first made, back when the cpu was 8MHz or 10MHz, the standard drives were around 20Megs. MFM controller cards were used then. Like the Seagate ST225, a 25Meg which when formatted, gives you a little over 21Megs of usable area. Data is recorded on the drives very much like an LP record. Only the data was in segments around the tracks of the surface of the disk. The computer wasn't fast enough to read a segment of data and then read the very next segment. In fact it was only fast enough to read every 7th segment around the track. So the hard disks were interleaved. That is, electronically the very next segment after the 1st segment was the 7th segment (renumbered to 2nd). In this way you could read the entire track with a minimal of revolutions. Then along came the RLL type controller cards and the interleave shrunk down a bit. Also, it increased the amount of data you could record on a drive. A Maxtor 42Meg drive using an MFM controller card could hold 64Megs of data with an RLL controller card. The Maxtor 42Meg drive cost $365.00 USD then. A lot of people came out with utility programs to change and experiment with the interleave. That was the big thing along with screen cards. Shrinking the interleave towards a 1:1 ratio was the goal. Also, the track to track seek time was in the 85ms range (thousands of a second). To load a large file (100K) it was important to get the interleave right. Of PRIME importance was to get rid of fragmented files. If the segments of the file were out of sequence with the interleave or on separate tracks then the necessity to wait for an additional full revolution of the disk for the segments out of sync caused a BIG delay in the read time. Also, if you had to jump tracks, at 85ms per track, it hurt time wise. You actually went from formula-1 speed (maybe formula-3000) down to turtle.

Defraging the hard drive got well embeded in the mind of anybody using a computer. It's a no-brainer. If you got a computer ya gotta defrag.

Today the computers are way more than fast enough to read consecutive segments on a track. They also can go from track to track in about 9ms. The MTBF (Mean Time Before Failure) is around 100,000 hours, up and running. Thats 11.5 years. ELEVEN POINT FIVE "YEARS ", and thats up and running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If you don't use your computer reading and writing files all day, every day then that hard drive should last a lot longer than 11.5 years.

If you have a fragmented file and you load that file every day then you lose 9 thousands of a second a day. You would have to load that file 111 times to gain one single second. Even tho you might have a fragmented file, you might not actually access that file for months so you wouldn't lose any time for that particular file.

Should you defrag every day. Even tho a defrag works the heck out of a hard drive (just watch the hard disk led) you won't wear it enough to cause trouble. Have at it.

Does it harm your hard drive. Wears the heads but not excessively.

Will it cause you any problems. None.

Does it make your computer faster. Absolutely but if you sneeze you probably wasted all the time you would gain in a year.

Does it matter. Not in the least.

Back in the beginning, defraging became a way for the guy at home to actually take a part in maintaining his computer in a meaningful way. It mattered. Now it doesn't. I defrag about once every six months. I try not to let it go more than a year.

Fragmented files will not in any way harm data or cause damage to hard disks. If your hard disk is 100% fragmented you probably couldn't tell the difference. Technology has pushed this problem out of need and mind. Spend the time on a more efficient way to block incoming and outgoing junk and spotting virus stuff. More fun anyways.

Giles

 

Criminy. It's getting bad when I can't remember the difference. Corrections made. Thanks for the pointers. I'm impressed that I could remember all that info, much less get it all arranged so it made any sense. I'm gonna watch Star Trek as a reward.

Giles