C Drive Fragmentation Percentage

Hi All, Assuming you don't defragment your C drive on a schedule, what percentage of fragmentation do you allow your C drive to get to before you do a defrag? Thanks for any input.

 

I defrag about once a month, even though the built-in Windows defragmenter says that it is not necessary to degrag. I do the defrag just before I make a Full Image of the Windows System Partition. I do not do any defrags during the month because I make some Differential Images during that period.

 

I allow my defragmenter to do it automatically when system is idle. Boot defrag every Saturday.

 

And what percent fragmentation is it?

 

I do a monthly check and manual defrag. By then, it's ~5%.

 

OK Thanks.

 

Same here...I do a monthly check and I am usually between 4-5%. After my manual defrag I do a boot defrag, then usually image the system.

 

I defrag like every 2 months just because im bored

Right now it is 8% fragmented and i haven't defrag it like 4 months at least LOL

 

Have the rules of thumb with defrag changed ?
I have read several articles and since W7 they swing wildly from DO NOT EVER defrag (can actually damage your HDD) to ONCE a month no matter what.
I do understand that doing it before a full system image backup is still recommended (makes sense), but are there other instances that would warrant a manual defrag? So I guess: if you uninstall several apps and remove a lot of large files (lots of GBs). Does it matter what OS you have, e.g. XP vs W7 or is it actually down to the size of you HDD and the number of files you are trying to accommodate?

 

I guess there's a huge difference in what you're doing when it comes to noticing performance decrease of a fragmented filesystem, average user surfing and mailing does not generate that much read and writes. On the other hand if you have a productive system or gaming machine it's a good idea too keep the filesystem compact and leen. SSD on the other hand makes all this pretty much useless.