Windows 7 - Computer Maintenance Guide

Most people service their cars regularly. Everyone knows that in order to keep the car running some regular maintenance is required. But ask these same people if they service their...

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noobvious,

1) The extent and actual incidence of fragmentation on home computers can vary substantially since it depends on usage patterns, disk capacity etc. So there is no general answer to your question.

2) In XP, splitting of a file into 2 or more pieces was considered fragmentation. But in Vista, MS changed the algo so that pieces larger than 64 mb were ignored in the defrag process. This was because more emphasis was now placed on the performance impact of defragmentation. If the chunks were large enough, they wouldnt elongate seek times significantly. Moreover ignoring such large chunks would reduce pressure on the system and also do away with the need to find temporary storage areas for large chunks.

Point is XP and Vista would report different percentages of defragmentation.

3) I believe in Windows 7, the defrag process has been made more comprehensive in that, Windows 7 can reallocate some files that vista couldnt.

But best to schedule defrag to run automatically and periodically in the background.

what if i shut it down ever night instead of putting it to sleep
would that be fine

Absolutely fine. In fact, I do that myself with mine. You will need to alter the settings (times) for automatic updates and routine maintenance (defragger, etc) so that they run when your system is powered up. Alternatively, you could always run these manually.

i do run those manually i defrag once a week maybe it might take me 2 weeks to do it sometimes but it gets done i disk clean everyday so all that i do manually

man i tell you that can air crap really ain't wroth $5 a 8oz can
i could have done what it did with blowing air from my lungs and a cloth