How often to defrag?

For years I have defragged weekly. A friend tells me that it is not necessary to defrag more than a couple times per year, and that I am wearing out the HD.

Opinions?

Jerry

 

It really depends on your usage habits. Defragging weekly is not a bad thing, and I wouldn't expect it to shorten the lifespan of the harddrive in any significant way.

 

Defragging probably has as much 'wear & tear' on a HDD as would occur on a heavily fragmented disk trying to locate data. Google a bit. I think there's a few 'old wives tales' out there with regard to defragging.

 

Thanks for the info. I like to defrag often so it does not take hours, as it did the first time.

Jerry

 

What you talking 'bout? Absolutely crap. Where did you hear that from? Defragmenting a HDD very often can help to prevent wear and tear from happening, you know that? You obviously don't know the benefits of defragmenting a HDD regularly.

Bigbuck says: Defragging probably has as much 'wear & tear' on a HDD as would occur on a heavily fragmented disk trying to locate data.

Nadirah says: Defragmenting a HDD very often can help to prevent wear and tear from happening.

So, who's correct? You guys be the judge.

 

I have diskeeper set to alert when My Hdd is 25% fragmented and that is about once a week with all of the web searching and downloading I do testing av apps. It usually takes about five minutes to defrag with diskeeper.

bigc

 

I use perfectdisk and I defrag and optimize my drive daily, sometimes even 3 times a day. By doing so, the fragmentation level on my drive is usually below 1% which I say is fantastic.

 

Perhaps I didn't phrase my reply too well.....My point was that your HDD is prone to 'wear and tear' any time your computer is on.......and further it is an old wives tale that "defragging wears your HDD out"....Everything wears your HD out!.....Perhaps you should curb your abrasive tone and just return to posting your usual copious and banal comments!
Buck.

 

I did not get that meaning at all from BigBuck. Nadirah, I think that you misunderstood what BB was saying and owe him an apology.

Acadia

 

Thats how I read it. BigBuck and nadirah, kiss and make up (not too literally)

Jimbob

 

I use the recommendation of PerfectDisk:

"Raxco recommends using this type of defrag pass in conjunction with SmartPlacement. You would create two schedules - one performing a Defrag Only pass daily, and the second performing a SmartPlacement defrag pass weekly. The weekly pass will consolidate the free space and the daily Defrag Only pass would be very quick. This would maintain optimum performance with minimal user impact."

 

I manually defrag usually once a week. (I don't like anything automated)

As a rule - I usually defrag after an installation (as well as a good reg cleaning) ... I DL'd directly to another drive, as to not disturb the drive the OS is installed on ... Also have a seperate scratch disk for Photo editting, Video editing ... etc. etc. (Same as previous) ... And only defrag if fragmentation is greater than 5%.

Steve

Ps. Thanks Acadia

 

I don't want to see any more comments like that. We can all disagree or not without such an abrasive tone.

 

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/...all/proddocs/en-us/defrag_best_practices.mspx
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1153280,00.asp

 

http://www.executive.com/eletter/current/eletter.asp
http://forums.majorgeeks.com/archive/index.php/t-8489.html

 

Hey Guys,

Good info. I guess I was overdoing the defrags. Using DK lite. Will try waiting a couple of wks.

Play on, big ed

 

Fellow Creatures,
Last night I had to blow the dust off my System Suite 4 manual to look into issues with Jetdefrag component. They specifically said that a fragmented hard drive causes harder work on it and will wear it down faster.

Did not want to jump into the middle of something but I thought about the strong opinions on this in this thread. Now maybe the manual writers were hyping the use of the product...but I do not think so.

 

i've started to use DIRMS and Buzzsaw. DIRMS defrags and i put Buzzsaw in my startup folder, so it can defrag on-the-fly. i last used DIRMS about 5 days ago and Buzzsaw has been running ever since.

at the moment i have afew fragments in my FW log and afew in system restore, other then that, it looks like i have just defragmented. if you consider i install and uninstall a fair few programs each day; for example, today i have installed 6 programs, and uninstalled 2/3, though admittedly they were uninstalled through System Restore, then it looks very good for DIRMS and Buzzsaw

i really believe DIRMS and Buzzsaw are the best tools for defragging you can get, what's more they are free.

it would be great if an expert could test them against some other defragmenters. however, i would bet DIRMS and Buzzsaw will come out top

you can read all about them below
http://www.dirms.com/

 

Iceni60, I use those two as well and am very satisfied with this couple.

Gerard

 

do you know how they compare with the shareware programs (PerfectDisk, Diskeeper and O&O) people use?

 

I'm afraid I don't have comparisons to the others myself. Only some from being read in forums.

Gerard

 

thanks, Gerard i used to use RejZoR's defragger, but now i think DIRMS might be better, and with Buzzsaw as well, i'm very happy http://www.moredesktop.com/Brand/S/Smilie/cache/thumb_smilie_640.jpg

 

I have been using the Executive Software Pro Edition, the one that is purchased for about a year now. I don't know about the lite version. but i defrag manually, depending on what i have been doing on a particular day. i have the automated smart feature but i don't believe in schedules as they don't know what i have been doing and i don't know how accurate their assessment of fragments is.
Sometimes I defrag daily and most especially when i am installing a new program.
Can't speak about DIRMS and Buzz Saw, but have seen them mentioned with no ill comments.
The only thing that I have ever been warned about in the classes that i have taken is not to use ChkDsk too often as I was told that it can cause some damage when it scans the surface of the hard drive.
How true that is i don't know, just thought that I would throw that out for discussion.
Any comments on this last item re ChkDsk??
I would appreciate experienced opinions. Thankyou
And by the way in my class i was advised that a badly fragmented drive puts more strain on the drive while it puts itself through the search for information that is requested.
Regards