I have my computer to defragment every night. I have 2hd's seperated into 2 partitions each, so in all I have 4 partitions. so I set it to defragment each one at a time spaced out over the night. is it bad to have it done so often? will it shorten their lifespan? I figured that it wouldn't matter to much because if some of the information wasn't used alot then it would be really quick, so it wouldn't matter a great deal.. any clarification would be appreciated. thanks.. Shuttle AN35N-Ultra AMD 2000+ 1gb 2100ddr Gainward Gforce 5600 128ddr 120GB of 7200 HD space UV Clear Acrylic Blue case POWMAX 400watt PSU Leadtek Winfast Tv2000xp Deluxe Tv Tuner<b

It's not bad, but it's probably pointless and you certainly won't be doing the drives any good by defragmenting so often, though on a daily basis I doubt whether there is any fragmentation unless you're loading/unloading big programs/files all of the time.

One of the ideas behinds ms-dos was that when writing to disc the info gradually spread across all areas of the disc. This spread the load and obviously cut down on wear and thus possible failure. This does cause fragmentation which might slow down performance. When the slowing down becomes noticeable you should defrag. A point of interest, originally defragging utilities were non ms, and then ms decided they should be providing and provided in later versions of dos. I think you are defragging far too often, because you are hammering the mechanics of the hdd unnecessarily which may lead to earier failure. Good luck - Keep us posted.

Sorry to disagree with the above two posts but you will not shorten the life of your drives by defragging. If you lookup any drive you will see a rating called MTBF. This is the mean time before failure. In other words the drives were tested/written/read until they failed. They pick the best average of functional time up and this is the MTBF rating. Let's look at it from a slightly different perspective. If you defrag often there is less to defrag so you would provide LESS wear and tear by defragging often. Like in anything we do there is a good mean point between too much and too little. Fact is turning off and on your drives is harder on them then just running. Mike Newcomb your info "One of the ideas behinds ms-dos was that when writing to disc the info gradually spread across all areas of the disc. This spread the load and obviously cut down on wear and thus possible failure." Has nothing to do with a OS, wear and tear and least of all DOS. This is how a hard drive works. Data is written on a first available first write basis and THIS is how a drive gets fragmented. To my knowledge only Netware has a builtin algorithm that writes data defragmented. This is why a netware server never needs to be defragged nor have there ever been utilities written to defrag a netware volume.

you all post great arguments on the subject.. I guess what I can do is make them be defragmented once a week... I use norton defrag and it does the thing where the most often used stuff is mooved closer to the front... so I guess it would be better over a week instead of a day since there will be less movement I believe.. thanks for the great responses Shuttle AN35N-Ultra AMD 2000+ 1gb 2100ddr Gainward Gforce 5600 128ddr 120GB of 7200 HD space UV Clear Acrylic Blue case POWMAX 400watt PSU Leadtek Winfast Tv2000xp Deluxe Tv Tuner<b

Your computer use will determine how often you need to defragment. I think once a month is sufficient for most people. But if you create-delete large files or install-uninstall software on a daily basis, you might need to defrag more often, perhaps weekly. Best Wishes, Bob

Might I suggest Wanderer has a re-think. In mtbf, t relates to usage not calender time. Defragging can take much t, thus bringing closer the f. Gl - Kup (Good luck - Keep us posted.)