I have always defragged once every week since I owned a computer. I'm amazed that there are some that don't even know what defragmenting means. When people have called about their computers running slow, I will ask them when was the last time they defragged and how long have they had their computer and alot of the times I will hear "what is defragmenting?". So I know that it had never been done it the 1,2 or three years that they owned it. I believe defragmenting is very important for your drive in ways as to possibly keep your drive running a little smoother and a little longer.

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per, though there are many freeware cleaners out, most freeware programs are only free "for individual use", so I hesitate to install any freeware on the PCs at work. I don't want to get anyone in trouble (especially yours truly lol). Dave

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Hi Dave, I completely understand where you are coming from. I think you're echoing this recent article. i_XpUser

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XpUser, to a much smaller degree, but yeah...that's the general idea. There's only 3 PCs at work, plus an older laptop that I own personally, but use at work. I use AdAware, Belarc, Irfanview, Power Archiver, & several other freeware programs on my own laptop, but wouldn't consider installing them on a company-owned PC. If someone else installs a program, it's their own fault. I just don't want it to be my responsibility, especially when I am capable of doing the same job manually (though admittedly slower). Dave

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once a week

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"Modern drive optimisers like Windows 98's Defrag which position program data according to how often you use it can, indeed, improve performance a bit" They don't arrange programs on the hard drive according to how often it's used. They arrange the data on the hard drive so files are in contiguous spaces. Otherwise, if the file is fragmented throughout the hard drive, the hdd has to seek from place to place. "Hard drive performance in toto makes very little difference to system performance, on machines with adequate physical RAM." Great! So let's throw the 10k raptors in the trash and switch to 5400 rpm hard drives! more RAM lets us load more data, so we don't have to go to the hard drive often. But even then, we have to go to hard drive from time to time. "The difference in performance between unfragmented and moderately fragmented drives is small" Let's see the proof on this. It depends on how the files are fragmented, how big the drives are, etc. Bigger hard drives will hold more files, and will probably fragment more. "and the larger the drive, for a given level of filesystem activity, the less fragmentation it will suffer." Only if you have a ton of free hard drive space...then the OS will hopefully add the files to the end, where they won't be interrupted. But once you start deleting files (ie: freeing space near the start of the hard drive), the OS will start fragmenting files. The more space you have, the more clutter you can accumulate (like your room, car, etc) "If you're using Windows NT or 2000 and NTFS-formatted drives, bear in mind that NTFS is famously insensitive to fragmentation - which is just as well, because it's hard to do anything with NTFS without it fragmenting data." NTFS is a file system. It doesn't keep track of how your hard drive is arranged. How can it avoid fragmentation if it doesn't manage the layout of the hard drive data? To avoid fragmentation, a file system would have to know where the free space is, fit the biggest file possible in it, and render the remaining free space in that block inaccessible. Then, while it's idling, move data towards the start of the hard drive. What they probably meant was that the default cluster size that NTFS uses is more useful to reducing fragmentation. According to Microsoft (click here), if your hard drive size is over 2 gigs, then NTFS has a cluster size of 4KB, while FAT uses 64KB. Thus, the allocated spaces are smaller, and more data can be fit into the gaps left from previously deleted files. Thus, it'll be fragmented less (but still fragmented). (Imagine a file being fitted into 5 or more gaps) "Look at overall system performance, rather than just disk subsystem performance, and the difference due to fragmentation often fades into the noise" I don't think I even want to answer this one lol. Why keep pointing to system performance, when what we're interested in is the file system efficiency? So if my p4 3.0 ghz cpu had a fragmented NTFS system, it'll outperform itself if I replaced the drive with a defragged FAT system? "How much effect fragmentation has on performance depends heavily on what files are fragmented, where the fragments lie, and what filesystem you're using." I thought the file system determines whether you get fragmentation or not. So now I guess NTFS does fragment, but it's not as noticeable?

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I never noticed any sort of improvement when fragmenting on both FAT32 and NTFS system. I still do a defrag every month or so but it seems as if its pointless because when I open any application initially it takes a bit longer to launch but any other execution after the initial leads to the normal loading times. Yeah I feel to not defragment my drive is more efficient because the most accessed files/programs are always ready to go when executed. Asus A8V Deluxe Rev.2 AMD Athlon 64 3800+/Newcastle 1 Gig Corsair PC3200 ATI Radeon 9800Pro/ATI Silencer 1Rev2 catalyst 5.1 Sound blaster audigy gamer Antec430 Via 4.55 Drivers

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My Windows install has been around for a while and for about a year I didn't defragment. Then a couple months ago I figured I ought to do so, but after analyzing my disk, I had to take a screenshot (it's just a little fragmented :). Now I use Diskeeper, which automatically defrags my drives when needed, so I don't manually run it. Anyway, I think defragmenting is certainly worthwhile, but once a week is too much. The only places you might see any improvement in that case is if you're doing a lot of file operations with many small writes. Databases can become fragmented over time since they are in constant use for example. In the end it really depends on what you use the system for and how much it's used. One thing nice about Diskeeper is that it tells you how fragmented the drive is and estimates how much of an average improvement you'll see. Most people (read: my grandparents, parents, most siblings) probably don't need to defragment more than maybe once every 6 months. Running Solitaire and checking Yahoo mail don't fragment the drive all too much (maybe that explains why our computers at my office don't get fragmented?). Right now the most important thing you can do software-wise to help a suffering computer is to make sure it's clean of any malware. Things like defragmenting are useful if the system has been up and running for a while and is used moderate to heavily. Other stuff like registry "cleaning" is close to worthless, especially when considering the risk-to-benefit tradeoff. Finally, I have to point out: Modern drive optimisers like Windows 98's Defrag... Windows 98? Modern? My 26,900 Turkish Lira anyway.

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"I thought the file system determines whether you get fragmentation or not. So now I guess NTFS does fragment, but it's not as noticeable?" ... for such a long post... All file systems fragment EQUALLY. This is because date is written in a first come first write basis. SOME OS's, like NETWARE, don't require a defrag utility since the OS writes files contiguously[defragemented]. NOT the case with MS OS's. In fact a lack of defrag can result in a non booting non repairable system with ntfs. Concerning 4K clusters. Have you thought about that for a second? Lets say I am working with a 1/2gig file. Lets also say that this is my AVERAGE file size. So for my AVERAGE file I am going to write and read 128 clusters. Now same scenerio, but our cluster size is 64K instead of 4K. The same EXACT file will only take 8 writes and reads. So for my Average file size of 512K what is the best cluster size? That's right, 64k. Depending maybe even larger. Kinda blows that Ms 4K default size out the door doesn't it? Can you imagine doing video editing of gig plus files on 4k clusters?!? Insane!!! 'Course if this was Netware you have subblock allocation which means the OS is smart enough to park 16 4K files in one 64k block. Learn something new everyday eh? There are a number of statagies that programming uses to minimize file fragmentation. NTFS uses one such algorithm to figure out the biggest block of contiguous available space to write a file and/or reserve space on a file so it can grow but remain contiguous. Moral of the story is defrag all your drives. It's like dusting. You can wait until you have alergies and dust bunnies everywhere or do a little everyday.week to keep the mites away.

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Another good reason to defrag... What is stored in memory is magenetic; zeros and ones or norths and souths. Over time the poles can shift slightly that can eventually lead to crosslinked files. Defragging will lift and refresh the data bit making it true north and south again. I also agree wholeheartedly with Wanderer to clean as you go. Regards, Bryan A difference with 4KB vs 64KB clusters is 'slack' space. I just checked; on my C: drive I have 699 .txt files that use, at most, 1KB each. Using 4KB clusters gives unused cluster space or slack space of 2,097KB but using 64KB clusters they would waste 44,037KB. Big difference of about 42MB for the same 699 .txt files.

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crosslinked files are a problem with the FAT/MFT no the files themselves. crosslinked is where two files, according to the file allocation tables, own similar sectors. Lost allocation units is where no one is recorded as owning the space but its not allocated as free. Bryco looking at just your 1k files doesn't do anything. You have to look at the AVERAGE file. Which in the case of the laptop I am writing from is 158K. At 4K this means my average file is occuping 40 clusters. If my cluster size was 8k = 20 clusters 16k = 10 clusters 32k = 5 clusters 40 reads vs 5 reads. Hmm I wonder which will be faster? The point here is there is a balance between cluster utilization [no "slack" or wasted space] and retrieval speed. With todays large drives I think it is absurb to stay back in the DOS days of trying to squeeze every bit of storage from a disk you can. I prefer SPEED of retrieval and writing to concern over wasted disk space. I believe MS's default 4K which is required for all sorts of things [security, quotas, etc] is a serious flaw in OS design. This configuration SLOWs file writes and reads. Back to the issue of defragging, which do you think with defrag faster? 4K clusters or 64k cluster with the disk size being the same? Of course the 64k will finish faster.

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I usually defrag every one to two months. The only major problem occurred recently after not defragging for a while. I used Norton's Speed Disk. I ended up getting a SYSTEM BOOT FAILURE message. To make a long story short I solved the problem by going into BIOS and going back to the default settings.

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When it comes to cluster sizes, it's really a matter of efficiency versus speed. Larger clusters can be read faster from the disk, but waste more space. Small clusters are very space-efficient, but take a little more time to read. NTFS uses cluster sizes based on the size of the partition. 4K is used for a number of reasons, partially because that's what NTFS compression depends on. Here's a few more sites that talk about cluster sizes, for anyone curious. I think it's a little much to call the 4K cluster a "serious flaw in OS design". They chose it for a reason, and considering they created the NTFS filesystem, they probably know a little about it.

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Of course, I have no way to test it but I can't help but wonder if Windows can defrag or read and write a single 64KB allocation unit any faster than 16 x 4KB clusters. I'd bet (foolheartedly no doubt) that with today's fast processors it wouldn't make a difference. Again back to to defrag or not to defrag. An 80GB drive using 64KB clusters would contain ~1.2M clusters to defrag and the same drive using 4KB clusters would contain ~19M clusters. With either number they will eventually get scattered about and would need a defrag. Looking at it from this perspective would suggest that it would be faster to read 2x16KB clusters on a fragmented drive then it would be to read 16x4KB scattered clusters. It has got to be faster to collect 2 clusters of data especially if they are scattered about. It has also got to be faster to collect the same two clusters if they are adjacent to each other versus one being at the beginning of the drive and the other at the end due to the physics of the mechanical requirement to retrieve the data. So, to defrag is much better than not to defrag. The more you do it the less you will notice a difference. Maybe a 64KB cluster drive will need to be defragged 16x sooner than a 4KB cluster drive (or the other way around)? Regards, Bryan

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