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Hi I have win XP home and I just wonder if there is any big difference in performance after a defrag on modern HD: s or is it only a way for companies to earn some money on old knowledge.
Hi....it doesn't really speed things up, it just sorts all the info instead of the puter just storing info in the next available open space....i do defrag mine, just out of habbit i guess. i personally would think it would help, cuz when info put all in where it's supposed to be, the less time i would take to retrieve that info, but with puters as fast as they are no-a-days, they really don't make that much of a difference, but, there are alot of good and free ones out there if you want to try and see if it would help.
best of luck
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Understand that is ntfs becomes severely fragmented you will not be able to access the system which will result in having to wipe the drive and start fresh.
Been there, done that. Defrag is important on large drives and you will see a performance increase in a defragged drive.
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I agree with THANATOS. A degrag will probably not make a difference that you will notice. Also a badly defragged drive (by itself) will slow down the system a tiny bit, but it will not cause a system problem.
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aegis1 you may wish to review this article
http://www.diskeeper.com/defrag/imp...
paying close attention to this
"Fragmentation can affect all files, including system files. Fragmentation also can occur both in the MFT and in the general storage area. As the MFT expands to meet the growing number or files or directories, it can take over non-contiguous clusters, and thereby become fragmented. In addition, even the metafiles within the MFT can be allocated non-contiguous clusters and therefore be fragmented. "
What do you think happens with a severely fragmented MFT and system files?
"A generally repeated belief is that NTFS is resistant to fragmentation. Unfortunately, this is a myth."
Here is another article
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/957180Please note this section
"If disabling compression does not work, or compression was not enabled to begin with, once a file reaches this state of severe fragmentation, the only way to defragment it is to copy or move the file to a new location, deleting the original, and then copying the new file back to the original location. It is not possible to defragment the file with a disk defragmentation utility. "As I stated in my previous post I have witnessed what happens to a xp pro system that becomes severely fragmented.
We had an internet kiosk box that had 32 users. IT tech was to have scheduled defrag but forgot. About a year and half later no one could logon. Upon examination in another system the file system was so fragmented not even 3rd party stuff could defrag it.
We wiped and reinstalled. Experience teaches. Live and learn.
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Those articles are not going to improve my knowledge of the NTFS and FAT file systems, Wanderer. I have extended experience in that area.
Defragging improves the overall speed of a system very little, and a badly fragged drive CANNOT cause a serious problem.
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agreed! imagine 1000gb hd with no partion and 768gb files. 7200rpm only.
how long it will take??Fragmentation can affect all files, Keeping your drive defragmented not only means a faster hard drive, but also makes it easier to recover accidentally deleted data using Drive Rescue. Like ScanDisk, Defrag is best run in Safe mode. Once there, click Start, Run and – if you’re running Windows 98 – type defrag and press.
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My two cents. The very reason you use NTFS on large partitions is the same reason files can become fragmented. That is the default size of 4K. Files will span over many more clusters at 4K then at 32K. Your system may not show much speed difference but I believe there is good reason to defrag whenever Windows recommends that you do.
pokyyehyeh
The example you cite in #6 is not something I would ever recommend. IMO a 1TB hard drive should be partitioned into multiple partitions. Look at the link below for some reasons.
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Thanks for all the answers.
I can say that I do defrag my drives from time to time but what I have heard here there are no reason to put money in a defrag program but instead run one of the free ones for that task. It could probably work with windows build in software but a think I go with a 3rd part instead.
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aegis1 the difference between an opinion and a prejudice is whether you can support it with facts.
Any links from Microsoft or a major vendor supporting your contention that "a badly fragged drive CANNOT cause a serious problem." ?
I quoted MS and Executive Software. From your extended knowledge can you explain why a severely fragmented MFT and metafiles would not cause a serious problem? Or explain why a file that can not be defragmented is not a problem to the system?
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"can you explain why a severely fragmented MFT and metafiles would not cause a serious problem?"
I challenge you to explain how you determined that a fragmented drive caused the problem that you used as an example. Or show us some documentation from Microsoft (or a reliable source) that it can happen. But that is not possible. The FAT and NTFS file systems are very reliable and have no problem dealing with extremely fragmented drives.
I want to make one thing clear. I have not said that defragging does not improve disk reads and writes. It obviously does that (a little), and it would be an important factor IF it slowed down the CPU for that time. However it doesn't affect the CPU. The CPU starts a Disk read or write, but then DMA (Direct Memory Address) takes over and handles all the actual data transfers. So while DMA is taking care of the data exchange, the CPU is free to do other things.
"Or explain why a file that can not be defragmented is not a problem to the system?"
A 'drive' that cannot be defragmented might not have enough free space. Another reason could be that it has been corrupted. That could be caused by an accidental shut down at a bad time, weak or bad sectors or whatever.
If you want to defrag every month or so, that is not a bad idea. But do not let your defragger scrunch up all the files to the front of your drive. Just let it do the defrag so it leaves empty sectors scattered around the drive. That way, when files are altered the new sectors aren't positioned at the last part of the drive.
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A severely fragmented MFT can result in Windows not booting. This was the case with XP SP1, but may have been solved with SP2 and higher. Microsoft released a utility called bcupdate.exe specifically to address this problem.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/320397
Keeping the file system defragmented is always a good idea...makes sequential operations such as backups, file copying etc faster. Also, if you deal with photoediting/photoshop, the time taken to generate thumbnails, open/save files etc (20-80MB RAW/TIFF files) is noticeable. Not a placebo effect.On busy file servers, fragmentation can slow down things quite a bit, including backup times.
Anyway, Microsoft redid the defragger for Vista and 7..they wouldn't have wasted resources and time on this if they felt it was unnecessary.
Defragmenting is useful, but there is also no point in micromanaging and wasting too much time on it. At home as well as work, I use Diskeeper and the versions since 2007 are auto defrag and work fine...just install them and never think about fragmentation/defragmentation..everything is done in the background.
BTW, the drive map showing the file distribution on the logical disk has no direct correlation to the situation on the physical disk since the hardware is abstracted from the filesystem.So you can't draw conclusions about the file distribution from the graphics.
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Thanks very much for that info, Volume-control. I stand corrected. :-)
I wasn't aware of that problem, but it's only applicable to the root folder and caused by not following guidelines.For others: The following is a quote from that web page:
"Typically, files are not written to the root folder. This condition may occur if a program regularly creates and removes temporary files in the root folder, or if many files are copied to the root folder by mistake."The problem was evidently fixed in XP SP2.
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aegis1 no one can argue against a prejudice. Only the person holding the prejudice can change it.
You invalidate your arguement when you say "The FAT and NTFS file systems are very reliable and have no problem dealing with extremely fragmented drives."
If that were the case, why would anyone invent defragmenters? Your statement denies logic, available knowledge or common sense.
Comparitively fat/fat32 is a baby and ntfs is an adult. NTFS handles file tracking completely differently than fat/fat32 does.
NTFS is more reliable than FAT due to journaling which never existed in fat.
Did you know that Netware never needed to be defragged? Novell wrote a file system that wrote all files contiguous to the drive. Why do you think they did that?
But I regress. Best of luck in your endeavors.
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Ok Wanderer, I give up. You are right and I am wrong. :-)
I apologise to the forum for posting bad information. :-(
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