Why I Still Defrag the Hard Drive
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As part of the weekly maintenance, when I run one of the week’s backup sessions, I defrag the hard drive. Let me first say that there are many people who do not defrag their hard drives. I fall into the ‘do defrag’ group for one major reason and two minor ones.
The major reason is that when the hard drive fails, I will have a better chance of data recovery. Although I have backups, the most recent work may not be backed-up yet. Having the data on the hard drive continuously, such as after a defrag, gives me a better chance of saving some time and being able to rescue that data. It may increase my chances only slightly, but still it is having more of the odds on my side.
There are two minor reason that are open to argument. I acknowledge that and recognize that some superstitious behavior may be in play, on my part. To some degree (no pun intended), defrag process should allow a hard drive to work less strenuously. Therefore, it may generate a wee bit less heat - and heat is not a friend to computer components. The second minor reason follows from this. If the heat is reduced, even by a small amount, and the hard drive is not asked to work as strenuously, then I may be able to put off the inevitable hard drive failure.
I know the hard drive failure will happen. I am hoping that, by doing the defrag process, I am setting the grumbling and cursing and spending further into the future.
Catherine
Tags: defrag, hard drive, data recovery, heat, strain
4 Comments
lalit
August 23rd, 2007
at 9:27am
I think your reasons make perfect sense. With the amount and size of data we tend to store and remove, sometimes on a daily basis, its not superstition or even paranoia, its pure common sense. There are claims that fragmentation is overrated etc, but fact is, it better to be safe than sorry, especially when the stake is important data (which might not even have hard copy backups). Its like going to a dentist when there are the slightest signs of a cavity rather than wait for all the teeth to decay:)
Joe Abusamra
August 24th, 2007
at 10:34am
Catherine,
Good post! I agree that defragmentation is good, and an important aspect of it is free space consolidation, along with the files.
You can check out PerfectDisk at www.raxco.com and www.perfectdiskblog.com.
Thanks,
Joe Abusamra
Raxco Softwre, Inc.
PS3_Ninja
August 24th, 2007
at 12:18pm
Try out third party defraggers to get away from the pain inflicted by the XP/Vista defrag ‘tools’. I’d personally recommend Diskeeper - it defrags nice and fast plus it has a superb automatic option. Once you enable autodefrag, you wont need to remember to defrag; Diskeeper does it when the system is idling without bothering you.
Donn Edwards
November 19th, 2007
at 5:42pm
I’m a defrag junkie, because I like to keep my files organised and I don’t want to wait for the hard drive to collect scattered pieces of file from random parts of the hard drive.
Defragging *can* help to reduce hard drive failure, but the “automatic” defrag offered by products like Diskeeper actually increases hard drive usage, not decreases it. Rather use a single-pass defrag utility like PerfectDisk or JkDefrag. Check out more info on “The Great Defrag Shootout”.
There are two other utilities that can help prolong the life of your hard drive. The first is Spinrite. Run it in “maintenance” mode once every 3 months and you’ll know if your drive is in imminent danger of failing. It even helps to prevent hard drive data loss.
The other is HD Tune. It doesn’t work on all drives, but where possible it gets the temperature reported by the drive, and warns you if the drive is getting too hot. This is especially useful in laptops, where crmped spaces and poor cooling have cost me at least two hard drives.