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I've never noticed much difference with defragging before

  • 01-10-2011 1:50pm
    #1
    euser1984
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,977 ✭✭✭


    I have a drive here that's fairly fragmented but I'm not sure if I will see much of a performance boost. I have tried defragging other computers in the past.


Comments

  • #2
    Capt'n Midnight
    Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 93,563 Mod ✭✭✭✭Capt'n Midnight


    Do you have at least 15% free space on the drive ?

    Otherwise you are just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

    If you have SSD then the wear leveling algorithm will quite literally re-fragment the files at a hardware level.

    The only way to truly defrag a windows machine (or any OS really) is to do a file based backup, wipe the drive and restore the files. This would get me nervous just thinking about it. If doing this then consider the $MFT size as small files are stored in this area rather than on the rest of the drive.

    If instead of using a full drive you just set up a partition at the start of a drive say 1/4 of the drive size then the sustained data transfer rate off the platter will probably be something close to twice that of data transfer at the back of the unused part of the drive. Seek times will be twice as fast too. Drives are so cheap these days it's an option to consider if storing wads of stuff isn't a priority.



    Personally I used the contig utility and PageDefrag utils from sysinternals to get most of the benefits without having to have the machine busy for ages.
    http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb842062


  • #3
    Capt'n Midnight
    Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 93,563 Mod ✭✭✭✭Capt'n Midnight


    If you have windows 7 let the OS do it for you

    http://blogs.msdn.com/b/e7/archive/2009/01/25/disk-defragmentation-background-and-engineering-the-windows-7-improvements.aspx


    In the non-windows world what typically happens is that defragmentation takes place when you save or copy a file and further action isn't needed. In the windows world file saves might be ~10% faster (if the free space isn't too fragmented) and defragment happens at scheduled intervals which won't adversely affect performance if it happens when your machine is on and you aren't using it.


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