chkdsk faster on defragmented hard disks?

[pstein]

If I run chkdsk on a defragmented hard disk partition:

Is this faster than on an undefragmented partition?

Peter

 

[Alejandro85]

I don't think so, although I don't have any hard references to back this up.
The file system check phases mostly deals with the system areas (FAT, MFT, etc) and not with the data portion itself, which is what is "defragmentation" deals with. It just checks that the files can be retrieved in full, that all pointer references are correct and similar validations, that are not affected by fragmentation.
As for the surface analysis phase, it reads every data sector in the disk, regardless if its occupied or not, without caring about its contents. Once again, fragmentation doesn't matters here.

 

[Digerati]

I think it depends on how fragmented the disk is and that is only because of the necessary updating of the file tables. So I think it might take longer on a heavily fragmented drive. But longer enough to notice? I doubt it.

Also note that unless you dinked with the default settings in Windows, your drives should not be heavily fragmented anyway. This is because automatic regular once a week defragging has been the default in Windows since Vista.

So you probably don't need to worry about defragging before running chkdsk. HOWEVER, I do strongly urge you to run Windows Disk Cleanup (or CCleaner if already installed) before running chkdsk to get rid of the clutter. This will improve chkdsk performance - substantially if a heavily cluttered disk.