We have had a server at work that we bought from our software people in 1998 that is running nt 4.0. My question is does NTFS drives need to be defragmented? The software people said that ntfs does not fragment like fat16/32 drives. I just don't see how this can be right though. If I do need to defragment the drives which 3rd party software should I use(diskkeeper)? Thanks for the help!! Nick

Try out this web site: http://www.oo-software.com They have a free defrag program and a bit of information about fragmented NT drives. hope this helps Andy

You can try this one also. I use Diskeeper Lite. It is not as fully functional as the PRO version, but it works and it's free ... http://www.executive.com/products/products.asp Tim.

NTFS does fragment - in essence, it just takes longer to show up the effects compared to DOS/win3x/'9x. Use a util that 'is' designed for NTFS...

Yes, NTFS does fragment just much slower then Fat 16 or 32... Diskeeper (Lite or full version) is the one most recommended to use. I do believe this third party software is the one Microsoft even licenced to use with W2K... (not completely positive on that) Either way - we use it here at my work, and it does make a noticable differance if it hasn't been done for years especially... Dres...

I purchased Diskeeper Pro some years back, when the economy wasn't being raped by the natural gas and petroleum industries and their puppet commander in chief. I use it periodically, and I find that while the computer is idling the system is doing lots of work sorting and prioritizing links. (As evidenced by a high frequency of flashes from the hard drive activity LED.) After using diskeeper the hard drive finds a state of satori and the light only comes on when I load an application. Claims that NTFS file systems don't need to be defragmented are hype. The Diskeeper Lite executable, if my memory serves me correctly, lacks several automatic features of the Pro version, and you can't do a boot time defrag. If you can afford it, Diskeeper Pro is state of the art.

Symantec SpeedDisk 5.1 looks better than O&O and Diskeeper. SpeedDisk may deftagment system files such as MFT and SWAP-file.