Ron Schenone

Defragmentation – Should You Defrag Or Not?

Posted by on Jan 30, 2007 | 8 Comments

Defragmentation was once confined to the geekiest of geeks. And then Microsoft started to include a tool called Defragmentor so that the average user could perform this chore. But over the years, “defrag” short for Defragmentor has come under attack between to very distinct groups of pro’s and con’s.

So how does your hard disk become fragmented?

“Fragmentation occurs when the operating system cannot or will not allocate enough contigous space to store a complete file as a unit, but instead puts parts of it in gaps between other files (usually those gaps exist because they formerly held a file that the operating system has subsequently deleted or because the operating system allocated excess space for the file in the first place).” Source – Wikipedia.

Ron’s definition – Saved or frequently used files are dropped all over the place on the hard disk making it harder to find them, which may impede system performance. By using the “defrag”. tool built into Windows or by third party software, it will line up your stuff like good little boys and girls.

Pro’s – Using ‘defrag” will speed up your system.

Con’s – “defrag” is no longer needed with drives formatted using NTFS.

Both the pro and con groups of thinking have some very valid points of views. My thinking is this. Why not ‘defrag” ? The amount of time to “defrag” a system is minimal and can normally be done when the system sits idle. And you are not going to make the system run worse by a ‘defrag’, but sometimes the system may appear to run better.

I ‘defrag’ my system once a week or so, using the home version of Diskeeper. It’s is just my personal preference and it does a great job. However, under [All] Programs, Accessories, System Tools is the Disk Defragmentor tool from Microsoft. A freebie for your use.

So should you ‘defrag’ your hard disk? Like I said, it doesn’t hurt anything. So give it a try and see if you notice any performance increase on your system.

Comments welcome.

[tags]Windows, defragmentation, performance, pro, con, diskeeper [/tags]

  • tektron

    I run Diskeeper on my system, it defrags automatically during idle system time without jarring any of the other functions. This is a wonderful new feature in the latest edition. With on the fly real time defrag, drives are in real good shape. I have no issues with defragging now.

  • http://wp3.lockergnome.com/nexus/blade/ Ron Schenone

    Hello tektron,
    Thanks for your comments. I just tried the free version of Auslogic Disk Defrag. that does a great job as well.
    Ron

  • Ryan Patigayon

    Works Great!

  • http://wp3.lockergnome.com/nexus/blade/ Ron Schenone

    Thanks Ryan,
    Ron

  • Durian

    Hi, I use Diskeeper too, and it has been great. I have left it on the auto-defrag mode, and it runs smoothly without posing any problems to other running programs. I have tried Auslogics, but it seems to take a loooong time to defrag on my PC. Also, don’t know if Auslogics can defrag the MFT..like Diskeeper does. I should have checked, but unfortunately I uninstalled it aftr giving it a quick try because it was so slow.

  • http://wp3.lockergnome.com/nexus/blade/ Ron Schenone

    Hi Durian,
    Thanks for your comments.
    Ron

  • Chuck Leamon

    defrag is the biggest waste of electricity in the universe. Unless you are running a single-threaded system, there is little chance that you can read a file from end to end without being interrupted by another app. or even the OS before getting there. The idea that having a file live in a contiguous space on the disk and that an application will read it in its entirety is at the root of this fallacy. Even reading a large file will cause the system to allocate virtual memory to read it into. oops, there’s another trip across the disk platter for that. once you stop reading and have to return, you’ve defeated the purpose of having the file in one place anyway.
    I had a drive that was very fragmented. I ran a job that Ii normally do and it took 28 minutes. I ran defrag, and 6 HOURS later, ran the job again, and it took 27 minutes and 45 seconds. So it was a little better (15 second).
    Another fallacy is that a file is organized sequentially. Consider a database file, which would be large, but the system will (virtually) never access it sequentially, thus fragmentation is not a concern nor an improvement to performance.
    I think a better improvement for performance would be to defrag the UNUSED parts of the disk.
    When I do get concerned about fragmentation (almost never), I just copy everything to another disk, delete it, then copy it back. Now both files and available space are (mostly) defragmented, plus I have that much needed backup.
    Chuck

  • Ringo

    A good experiment to do about defragmentation is to`defrag everyday for a while, it then takes no more than a couple of minutes.
    Now don’t defrag for a month and see how long it takes to defrag then.
    That should be a good representation of the system running on a defragmented HDD.
    I say defrag everyday.

    Cheers