Defragging a 240gb approx drive

[Miaow]

ok some people dont like to defrag but i do usually lol

This comp is partioned at 246gb and 10gb - not interested on defragging D which is restore but is it safe to defrag c: at that size im a little unsiure lol?

have installed heaps recently - in the past only had 20gb drive or less

[Miaow]

ah well it defragged ok tried last night but was real slow

[arthurking83]

With windows NT technology(ie. any of the Windows based on NT, 2K, XP, Vista...etc... it's not necessary. Doesn't seem to produce any effective gain in any manner, so it seems like wasted time.

From memory(and I'm not a tech, just an enthusiastic curious type) I don't think there's ever any reason to be fearful of defragging anyhow, unless your drive is overly full.. in the high 90% region. I think there could be data loss in some rare cases due to buffering if the drive is near it's limit

[Miaow]

thanks authur - i spose i just like the see tjhose continginous blue bits

[GlennSan]

With windows NT technology(ie. any of the Windows based on NT, 2K, XP, Vista...etc... it's not necessary. Doesn't seem to produce any effective gain in any manner, so it seems like wasted time.

From memory(and I'm not a tech, just an enthusiastic curious type) I don't think there's ever any reason to be fearful of defragging anyhow, unless your drive is overly full.. in the high 90% region. I think there could be data loss in some rare cases due to buffering if the drive is near it's limit

Not sure I can agree with your "not necessary" comment Arthur. Any of the recent verisions of Windows are clearly far superior to the old days but the simple fact is that when the O/S creates space for a file, it cannot know what eventual size that file might grow to. Many files do not change size during their life of course but many data files do. As files are modified during updates, fragmentation often results and this unavoidably leads to increased head movement to read or write the required blocks. Defragmentation will eliminate this for most files each time it is performed.

These days, with the various buffering and caching methods employed by the O/S and the drive electronics, the effects are probably far less obvious then they once were. Perhaps this is why you made your comment?

In any case, defragging is still a useful bit of housekeeping that most people should do on Windows systems.

Your comments re near-full drives are very valid. Most defraggers will caution the user or refuse to run once a certain usage threshold is reached (often 85-90% used space)

[zollo]

Defragging and regularly cleaning/compressing registry's etc make a significant difference. I have mine set to auto once a week. Defragging also helps keep pc's stable - a lot less crashes etc