when to defrag?

On 5/24/2013 9:06 AM, MZB wrote:
W7 Home. I turned off defrag scheduling as I prefer to do it when I
choose. Laptop is running reasonably speedy but when I do the analysis
it says 10% fragmented files.

Is there a rule of thumb. Should I defrag?

I use W7 Home

Mel


I am a big believer in defragging. I defrag at least once a week. I
use Auslogics disk defrag
(http://download.cnet.com/Auslogics-D...10567503.html).
It is very fast and does a good job. Like the others I also use CCleaner
regularly.

MZB wrote:

W7 Home. I turned off defrag scheduling as I prefer to do it when I
choose. Laptop is running reasonably speedy but when I do the analysis
it says 10% fragmented files.

Is there a rule of thumb. Should I defrag?

I use W7 Home

Mel

It can affect startup speed, if you have say a new version of Firefox that has written
itself into abandoned tiny holes in the filesystem, or if Firefox has a huge history
file that it wants to read in (substitute any app for Firefox; history files will have
been written a tiny bit at a time and so scatter a lot)

Prefetch fixes it all after startup, when the files will be copies in RAM in any case.

I defrag infrequently but not never on an active machine. We have machines whose
permanent files change seldom that we never defrag.
--


On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk.

One thing to clean up if you've ever had an
antivirus program

C:WINDOWS/system32/drivers/fidbox.dat
and
C:WINDOWS/system32/drivers/fidbox.idx

at least on XP. You have to remove them in safe
mode because they're in use otherwise.

They'll regenerate and grow slowly until you
delete them again. It's caused by a Kapersky
(sp?) program that a lot of antivirus systems use.

Delete them every few months. They scatter into a
lot of holes and if nothing else slow down defrag
trying to reassemble and move them.
--


On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk.

On Sunday, May 26, 2013 8:32:32 AM UTC-5, Ron Hardin wrote:


It can affect startup speed, if you have say a new version of Firefox that has written

itself into abandoned tiny holes in the filesystem, or if Firefox has a huge history

file that it wants to read in (substitute any app for Firefox; history files will have

been written a tiny bit at a time and so scatter a lot)


I restart probably once or twice a week...it's used often enough that we use "sleep" mode.

Bob_Villa wrote:
I restart probably once or twice a week...it's used often enough that we use "sleep" mode.

We just last week restarted two machines that had been up 24/7 for over a
year. Say what you want, XP is a stable system.

We needed to reroute a power cable.
--


On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk.

On May 26, 12:20*pm, Ron Hardin wrote:
Bob_Villa wrote:
I restart probably once or twice a week...it's used often enough that we use "sleep" mode.

We just last week restarted two machines that had been up 24/7 for over a
year. *Say what you want, XP is a stable system.

We needed to reroute a power cable.
--


On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk.

"...there has always been ghosts in the machine, random segments of
code that have grouped together to form unexpected protocols...."

Couldn't resist!

Larry

On Sun, 26 May 2013 16:20:49 -0700 (PDT), Larry
wrote:

On May 26, 12:20*pm, Ron Hardin wrote:
Bob_Villa wrote:
I restart probably once or twice a week...it's used often enough that we use "sleep" mode.

We just last week restarted two machines that had been up 24/7 for over a
year. *Say what you want, XP is a stable system.

We needed to reroute a power cable.
--


On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk.

"...there has always been ghosts in the machine, random segments of
code that have grouped together to form unexpected protocols...."

Couldn't resist!

Larry
Defragging is important when there are a lot of file
edits/deletions. On some machines once a week is hardly often enough
- while others can go a year or more.

On Sunday, May 26, 2013 8:43:27 PM UTC-5, wrote:
Defragging is important when there are a lot of file

edits/deletions. On some machines once a week is hardly often enough

- while others can go a year or more.

Questions: Does it make you feel better or does your HDD "feel" better? Does your HDD trash more (work harder) defragging or seeking files on a non-fragmented drive or using the swapfile?

It's a can of worms AFAIC.

On Monday, May 27, 2013 11:13:59 AM UTC-5, Bob_Villa wrote:
On Sunday, May 26, 2013 8:43:27 PM UTC-5, wrote:

Defragging is important when there are a lot of file



edits/deletions. On some machines once a week is hardly often enough



- while others can go a year or more.



Questions: Does it make you feel better or does your HDD "feel" better? Does your HDD trash more (work harder) defragging or seeking files on a non-fragmented drive or using the swapfile?



It's a can of worms AFAIC.

Should have said, "seeking files on a fragmented drive".

On Mon, 27 May 2013 09:13:59 -0700 (PDT), Bob_Villa
wrote:

On Sunday, May 26, 2013 8:43:27 PM UTC-5, wrote:
Defragging is important when there are a lot of file

edits/deletions. On some machines once a week is hardly often enough

- while others can go a year or more.

Questions: Does it make you feel better or does your HDD "feel" better? Does your HDD trash more (work harder) defragging or seeking files on a non-fragmented drive or using the swapfile?

It's a can of worms AFAIC.
The drive thrashes less, database access is significantly faster -
all the way round better drive access speed.