How quickly the OS partition fragments depends on how you use it. Some programs produces a lot more fragmentation than others. I haven't defragged my C: drive in months, and it is now at 2.15% fragmented. I have seen times when I needed to defrag it every week, but that was when I was less discriminating out what could write to it.
thx rap#, umm. for me i only back up once when i first install my os, and the applications that i need all the time, those work file, music and everything else i save them on my hard drive, since i never experienced hard drive failure (maybe i will learn when it fails) i think this problem is solved now, but i got new problems.
as i said before, i am reinstalling windows 7, when im in the screen where you delete format or create new partition, all those options are grayed out, except for the format button on my C partition and the hidden windows7 partition
@Dzomlija, i see what you mean now, btw, Western Digital green claims that the harddrive is turned off when ever im not using it, but everytime i go in and navigate, it takes a while for it to load, is it because it is talking time to turn back on? or i seted up wrong? cause i think it is just stupid if it takes like 10+second to navigate a file inside everytime i open it.
@seekermiester, what program generally generates fragments ? the programs i often use are ms office, photoshop/illustrator, 3dsmax, msn, a few downloading programs, and a ton of games. i cant think of other types of programs really that generates lots of fragments, but im really noob at this, in fact, i dont even truely understand what fragment really is
I'm not one to disagree. My computer stays on 24/7 also. When hard drives are off, they cool, and the lubrication of the spindle congeals. That causes the drive to be sluggish on start, and more wear occurs. Heating and cooling effects most any kind of electroncs, whether lubrication is a factor or not. It seems that every time that I have had something fail on my system, it was when I had powered down for some reason, and when restarting, something blows a gasket.
The easy answer is games, but any program that writes a lot of data to the drive contributes to fragmentation. It is something that you simply need to observe over time with the programs that you use. Something that would help with that is a defragger, like O&O, which lets you see areas of fragmentation on the drive, and lets you select fragmented blocks to see what is written in them.
EDIT: Fragmentation is when data is for a particular function is written in scattered locations in a partition, rather than in a continous sequential line. When data is fragmented, it required the drive to have to do a lot of seeking to locate what is needed, which slows down operations. Ideally, a single file should be in the same location, instead of being broken into pieces. This is also true of program directories containing multiple files which are dependent on each other. For all practical purposes, it is not possible to eliminate fragmentation or dislocation altogether, only minimize it.
thanks a lot seeker, now i basically understand most of the stuff, any help on the greyed out delete, format, and create new partition button when installing windows7 ? btw, should i mark one of them active in order for it to work? i forgot how i installed it last time, lol
I'm not sure that I understand what the problem is with the grayed out items, so I will let someone else comment on that. However, you definitely want the partition that the OS resides on to be active, and from what you have said about not partitioning, obviously the partition needs to be marked active.
EDIT: Back on the fragmentation aspect, one thing that may cause excess fragmentation is to have the paging file on the same partition with the OS, etc. I create small partitions strictly for them. Some people do not use a page file at all, but I can't see the advantage in that.
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