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What are the benefits on defragmentation?
It takes forever, is it worth the wait? does it really improve system performance? I always end up canceling... it just takes way to much time..
It takes forever, is it worth the wait? does it really improve system performance? I always end up canceling... it just takes way to much time..
over the course of time, files on your hard drives become 'fragmented' - bits of them get scattered around all over the place.
if you're old enough to remember vinyl records, you will also remember that the audio tracks were arranged more or less in concentric rings around the disc - the first inch from the outside was track one, the second inch was track two etc. that is an example of a perfectly defragmented disc.
now imagine if the first five seconds of track one were at the edge of the record, but the next five were half way into the disc, the proceeding ten seconds were right in the middle and the rest were similarly all over the place. this is an example of severe fragmentation.
in order to play the record, the record player's head has to jump about all over the place, taking time and wearing itself out.
hard drives are similar in this respect - if you defragment your computer, all the files end up being arranged nice and neatly on your drives, and so theoretically load up quicker.
in practise, you probably won't notice that much difference, but why not set the defrag running before you go out or something, and let it do its thing.
you can probably speed up the process a bit by clearing out all your temp files and emptying your recycle bin before you start.
Last edited by mickey megabyte; 19 Oct 2009 at 17:58.
It's not something you should be sitting there watching .. it's a 'set and forget' type of thing.
If you just leave it at the default settings, you won't even notice it .. no real need for a third-party app either in my view.
Imo, O&O defrag 12 (latest version) is the best defragger I've used. It runs in the background mostly with no noticeable impact on system performance. Every now and then it does a more complete defrag along with repositioning files for better performance when it thinks it's needed. Again, I haven't noticed any impact on performance while it's doing these tasks, unlike other defragging apps I've tried. So that's why I like O&O. Gets the job done, and optimizes file placement, all on auto pilot without any noticeable performance hit while it's running in the background.
(Note: I gave up on Perfect Disk because my system got laggy while it was operating in the background.)
Also, I'm not 100% sure but my impression is that the native windows defgragging app doesn't reposition files for better performance, or if it does, it doesn't do so in as sophisticated a manner as O&O does. Jmo.
Defrag overnight. You won't even notice it while you sleep.
I've not tried O&O defrag as mentioned by Harpua but I do find Perfect Disk 10 really good.
I don't run it in the background just as part of my Sunday routine. In fact I run it while I'm taking a bath.
It put all the boot files up at the front of the disk.
Seems to speed things up to me. I remember noticing the difference especially the first time and if you do it regularly it doesn't take as long.
I also used a free one called Smart Defrag and that was better and swifter than windows own.
Cheers, John:)