defragmenting

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  1. Posts : 851
    Windows 8 Professional x64
       #1

    defragmenting


    I regularly defragment my HDD once in a month or once in 15 days.does frequent defragmenting cause any damage to HDD??
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  2. Posts : 28,845
    Win 8 Release candidate 8400
       #2

    bagavan said:
    I regularly defragment my HDD once in a month or once in 15 days.does frequent defragmenting cause any damage to HDD??

    Is it a SSD, or regular mechanical HD? You should only defrag when your % of fragmented files starts climbing over 10%. Unless you are adding and removing a ton of files on an OS HD you are doing it too often.



    ken
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  3. Posts : 851
    Windows 8 Professional x64
    Thread Starter
       #3

    It is a normal HDD..Report says 9% fragmented..I wanted to know does frequent defragmenting cause damage?
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  4. Posts : 5,056
    Windows 7 x64 pro/ Windows 7 x86 Pro/ XP SP3 x86
       #4

    No, it doesnt.

    Myth No. 4: You can wear out your hard drive if you defragment too often.

    Not true. The truth is, your drive is going to work much harder if you never defrag at all! It is a common misconception that defragmentation is stressful to disk drives. In reality, fragmentation results in many more disk accesses.

    Here is an example: If you have a file that is fragmented into 50 pieces, and you access it twice a day for a week, that's a total of 700 disk accesses (50 x 2 x 7). Defragmenting the file may cost 100 disk accesses (50 reads + 50 writes), but thereafter only one disk access will be required to use the file. That's 14 disk accesses over the course of a week (2 x 7), plus 100 for the defragmentation process = 114 total. 700 accesses for the fragmented computer versus 114 for the defragmented computer - the benefits are obvious.
    source: http://www.diskeeper.com/diskeeper/m...rive-wear.aspx
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  5. Posts : 851
    Windows 8 Professional x64
    Thread Starter
       #5

    should I defragment only the system drive or other drives as well?
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  6. Posts : 5,056
    Windows 7 x64 pro/ Windows 7 x86 Pro/ XP SP3 x86
       #6

    Defragmenting the system drive means access to the OS files and program files is the fastest possible, as it should be. Personally, I never defrag data drives, since data needs to be accessed only occasionally.
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  7. Posts : 851
    Windows 8 Professional x64
    Thread Starter
       #7

    what about an ssd?will it damage?
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  8. Posts : 9,582
    Windows 8.1 Pro RTM x64
       #8

    It is not recommended to defrag an SSD drive. Each cell is a row/column intersection, and is addressable as such, with negligible difference in access time between different locations on the drive (typically <0.05msec for the whole drive). A HDD is different, and defragging this will boost its performance by moving data around so that it is located in successive sectors so that it can be read in one go without having to wait for the platters to spin round so that the sector containg the next block of data can be read.
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  9. Posts : 5,056
    Windows 7 x64 pro/ Windows 7 x86 Pro/ XP SP3 x86
       #9

    SSDs dont need to be defragged.

    The main reasons for defragging your disk is to reduce seek times and to place the majority of your data particularly the OS and program files on the outer edge of the disk where read and write speeds are faster on a mechanical drive.

    SSDs make nonsense of both these factors. For one their seek times are virtually nil. And secondly, there are no faster/ slower regions on the disk because there is no mechanical limiting factor. Defrag will actually decrease the life expectancy of a SSD because there are only so many writes per cell before failure.
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  10. Posts : 1,113
    windows 7 professional & ultimate 64bit laptops
       #10

    Bill2 said:
    No, it doesnt.

    Myth No. 4: You can wear out your hard drive if you defragment too often.

    Not true. The truth is, your drive is going to work much harder if you never defrag at all! It is a common misconception that defragmentation is stressful to disk drives. In reality, fragmentation results in many more disk accesses.

    Here is an example: If you have a file that is fragmented into 50 pieces, and you access it twice a day for a week, that's a total of 700 disk accesses (50 x 2 x 7). Defragmenting the file may cost 100 disk accesses (50 reads + 50 writes), but thereafter only one disk access will be required to use the file. That's 14 disk accesses over the course of a week (2 x 7), plus 100 for the defragmentation process = 114 total. 700 accesses for the fragmented computer versus 114 for the defragmented computer - the benefits are obvious.
    source: Myth: Frequent Defrag Will Wear Out Your Hard Drive


    Excellent!
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