How Often Disk Defrag

[BillW50]

In

You shouldn't defrag SSD at all.

Who said anything about defragging a SSD, Bob?

 

[mechanic]

Well MSFT clearly disagree with you as regular defrag is setup by
default.

I checked a W7 system yesterday. It has been in use as a server for
over a year and had never been defragmented. Analyse returned 3%
fragmented on the main disc.

Servers probably don't disturb the main volume/drive much, desktop
workstations with users that install/try/remove lots of software
will get their disks fragmented pretty soon.

 

[Wolf K]

Well MSFT clearly disagree with you as regular defrag is setup by
default.


Servers probably don't disturb the main volume/drive much, desktop
workstations with users that install/try/remove lots of software
will get their disks fragmented pretty soon.

Not to mention all the background creation of temporary files, all of
which are deleted eventually (depending on cache size limits, etc.) And
surprise, surprise, people do from time to time clean up Inboxes,
folders, etc, all of which releases sectors. Fragmentation is inevitable
on single-user systems.

Time to start a discussion on the bad effects of fragmentation?

I think not. ;-)

Best,
wolf K.

 

[Ken Blake]

Well MSFT clearly disagree with you as regular defrag is setup by
default.

You are either misunderstanding what I meant or I expressed myself
poorly. What I mean is that manual defragging, over and above what is
dome automatically, is almost never needed.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

Work well how? How fragmented can a drive get in a week? Or is this
some kind of obsessive-compulsive thing you have? ;-)

Stef

In spite of your remark elsewhere about wear and tear, I suspect that
the weekly defragging is harmless, so I'd let those who feel better
about it just go on doing it.

Since I don't bother (unless Windows is doing it behind my back), at
least it's harmless here

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

In spite of your remark elsewhere about wear and tear, I suspect that the
weekly defragging is harmless, so I'd let those who feel better about it just
go on doing it.

Since I don't bother (unless Windows is doing it behind my back), at least
it's harmless here

I looked at my Services. Disk Defragmenter is set to run Manually and
is currently stopped. FWIW...

 

[Ken Blake]

In spite of your remark elsewhere about wear and tear, I suspect that
the weekly defragging is harmless, so I'd let those who feel better
about it just go on doing it.

I agree. I think it's hardly ever needed, but on the other hand it
doesn't hurt to do it.

 

[VanguardLH]

Who said anything about defragging a SSD, Bob?

Who said the OP (Karen) is defragging an HDD, Bill?

Karen didn't say what type of device she is defragging. Most of us
*assumed* she is doing it on a magnetic hard disk. I figure Bob's post
was just a warning *in case* Karen had an SSD or considering it for
later addition. For what little was stated in Karen's post, she could
be defragging a floppy, a USB thumb flash drive, an emulated CD/DVD
drive that loads an .iso image, or even an emulated hard disk inside a
virtual machine. Karen didn't say WHAT is getting defragged.

After over a week of absence, defragging really wasn't an important
issue for Karen. Oh well, it gave us here a chance to argue the
benefits or not along with the perceived need for frequency.

 

[Paul]

I agree. I think it's hardly ever needed, but on the other hand it
doesn't hurt to do it.

Considering the relatively short runtime seen with the built-in
one, I don't think it matters too much.

Paul

 

[Stan Brown]

Karen F wrote on 03/04/2012 08:09 ET :
Yes, it is well to defrag every month.

Did you even read the discussion? Perhaps, rather than just make a
bald statement, you might explain why you disagree with quite a few
of us. We might all learn something from the discussion.

 

[Stan Brown]

[quoted text muted]

I completely disagree. First, in Windows 7, defragging is almost
never needed.

Well MSFT clearly disagree with you as regular defrag is setup by
default.

Where do you get that? It certainly was not set up by default on my
system.

 

[Char Jackson]

[quoted text muted]


I completely disagree. First, in Windows 7, defragging is almost
never needed.

Well MSFT clearly disagree with you as regular defrag is setup by
default.

Where do you get that? It certainly was not set up by default on my
system.

I have a fresh install of Win 7 Ultimate x64 full retail here and
defrag is scheduled to run every Wednesday morning at 1:00 AM. It's in
Scheduled Tasks, along with a bunch of other stuff that I didn't put
there.

 

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

On Mon, 12 Mar 2012 10:28:13 +0000, Stephen Wolstenholme wrote:

[quoted text muted]


I completely disagree. First, in Windows 7, defragging is almost
never needed.

Well MSFT clearly disagree with you as regular defrag is setup by
default.

Where do you get that? It certainly was not set up by default on my
system.

I have a fresh install of Win 7 Ultimate x64 full retail here and
defrag is scheduled to run every Wednesday morning at 1:00 AM. It's in
Scheduled Tasks, along with a bunch of other stuff that I didn't put
there.

I have the same task for the same day/time, and have seen it on clean
installs of Win7 Pro x86 OEM, Pro x64 OEM, and Enterprise x64.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

28:13 +0000, Stephen Wolstenholme wrote:

[quoted text muted]


I completely disagree. First, in Windows 7, defragging is almost
never needed.

Well MSFT clearly disagree with you as regular defrag is setup by
default.

Where do you get that? It certainly was not set up by default on my
system.

I have a fresh install of Win 7 Ultimate x64 full retail here and
defrag is scheduled to run every Wednesday morning at 1:00 AM. It's in
Scheduled Tasks, along with a bunch of other stuff that I didn't put
there.

I have the same task for the same day/time, and have seen it on clean
installs of Win7 Pro x86 OEM, Pro x64 OEM, and Enterprise x64.

I said in another post that on my computer, Defrag as a service is set
to Manual start and isn't running (i.e., wasn't running when I looked).
I thought it meant it wasn't happening here.

But the above remarks made me look at Task Scheduler, and lo!, Defrag
is in there, scheduled to run at 1:00 AM every Wednesday of every Week.
It last ran at 3/07/2012 19:04:43, according to the entry in the
Scheduler.

Fooled again by Windows...

 

[WaIIy]

I completely disagree. First, in Windows 7, defragging is almost never
needed.

Based on your magic 8 Ball or what ?

 

[KissyFur]

Based on your magic 8 Ball or what ?

throw your computer out and you will never have to defrag. that is
the only correct answer. otherwise its a personal choice. if it
makes you happy defrag whenever you get the urge.

 

[Bob I]

throw your computer out and you will never have to defrag. that is
the only correct answer. otherwise its a personal choice. if it
makes you happy defrag whenever you get the urge.

That's a pretty ignorant reply.

 

[james]

"WaIIy" wrote in message

I completely disagree. First, in Windows 7, defragging is almost
never
needed.

Based on your magic 8 Ball or what ?

He sounds like a Mac user.

 

[Stefan Patric]

Comes down to whether you're the type of person that prefers incremental
maintenance to keep things smooth or prefers to wait to do major or
catastrophic repairs before which you incurred less than stellar
operation. A little at a time or a lot all at once. You could pickup
each sock you drop in your bedroom and put it away or you could wait
several months and pick them all up to get rid of the huge mess.

You've missed the whole point. I AM talking about regular, periodic
maintenance, i.e. defragging, just ONLY when it's needed, and not some
pulled-out-of-the-air schedule (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.) based on
nothing more than a regular, recurring time period.

Why do you think defraggers have an analyzer tool separate from the
defragging part? It's there so the user can test the drive for the degree
of fragmentation, and decide if they want to defrag.

You won't be saving on disk wear by doing the major defrag at infrequent
intervals versus doing minor defrags at frequent intervals. Do a lot
all at once but infrequently or a little each time and frequently.
Please explain how there is any difference in disk wear. If left, the
[snip]

The more the drive head moves, the more wear and tear. The more you
defrag, the more the head moves. Even if the defragging takes less time,
because there's less fragmentation, the head still has to move numerous
times to accomplish the defragging whether there are a few fragmented
files or many. It's not like the software "know" innately which files
are fragmented, and only works on those files. It has to read all the
files each time you defrag.

Now, to be fair, I doubt with today's drives this "extra" head wear is
all that significant. The user will probably replace the whole computer
and the drive long before the drive is even close to failure.

This argument has been used many times in the past and yet no one
presents any empirical study to prove a single huge defrag puts less
wear on the hard disk than a bunch of smaller defrags. It's become
urban legend or wives' tale proliferated by repetition without proof.

I haven't been unable to find any such studies either. But the engineers
I know and have talked to over the years, and who maintain systems and
have seen every kind of failure, have all told me the same thing: that
excessive defragging reduces a drives life. But then excessive reads and
writes of any kind reduces head life, doesn't it? However, with
defragging you have a choice of how much to do it.

Many of those that do periodic defrags are scheduling them to run when
they are not at or using their computer, so what functionality is lost?
None.

It's not like they care about the reduction in responsiveness of their
host during a little defrag because they're not at their computer to use
it. Tis easy to schedule a tiny defrag that typically takes less than
half an hour than wait for months to do a defrag and not be sure when it
will complete which means it could be still running when you return to
your host or interfere with other scheduled tasks.

"Tiny defrag?" "Half an hour?" I think you have misinterpreted my
advice on defragging. I just defragged a business desktop that had never
been defragged or "cleaned" since its purchase 7 or 8 years ago. The
40GB drive was about 60% full. Cleaning with Windows' XP Disk Cleaner
took about 40 minutes--longest I've ever experienced--and the defrag,
with the included XP one, about 45. This was the worse case of
fragmentation I've ever seen in a user desktop. So, what do you mean
when you say, tiny defrag? What percent fragmentation? Are we talking
enterprise servers or average user desktops?

Since Windows XP, automatic defragmentation has been part of Windows.
It's running even when you don't run your defragger. Of course, the
Windows-supplied auto-defragger has different goals than an on-demand
defragger but your hard disk is still getting defragged a little at a
time while Windows is running. In fact, because of this background
defragmentation, it is recommended you disable it if you use intend to
frequently defrag with a 3rd party tool. Since each defragger has
different algorithms for best placement of files, one will undo the
defrag by another.

Prefer to defrag manually. I run my Windows systems very lean anyway
with as few background tasks as possible to improve performance,
increase available RAM, etc. Windows isn't all that efficient, ya' know.

With little defrags you minimize the impact on your host regarding
responsiveness: the impact is short-lived. The little defrag takes a

This is true. Less fragmentation takes less time to defrag.

little time so it is easy to schedule and permit it sufficient time to
complete so it doesn't interfere with later scheduled jobs and it won't
be running when you return to your host. The little defragmentation
will still be there for a big infrequent defrag so you haven't saved

How "big" and "infrequent" do you mean? None of my Windows systems every
get past about 15 to 20% fragmented before being defragged.

The only way the argument wins for doing infrequent big defrags is to
not do them at all; i.e., push out the defrag interval so far that added
disk wear for ANY defragging is insignificant to the MTBF of the device.
That is, do frequent little defrags or infrequent big defrags OR don't
defrag at all.

Pointless hyperbole.

Rather than regurgitate this repeated myth, perhaps someone can present
real empirical data (laboratory testing) showing overall head wear for
frequent small defrags along with reduced head movement to access
[snip]

I don't think anyone really cares enough to run tests. The drive
manufacturers would certainly be happy if drives failed faster. Then
you'd have to buy another. Good for the bottom line. ;-)

Do you know of a tool that records a history of how often the heads have
to move to different cylinders both during a defrag operation and also
outside of that defrag (to measure access of fragmented files)? Then

No. Have never come across anything like that. Doesn't mean it isn't
"out there" somewhere.

Stef

 

[Gene Wirchenko]

On Wed, 14 Mar 2012 04:59:43 +0000 (UTC), Stefan Patric

[snip]

The more the drive head moves, the more wear and tear. The more you
defrag, the more the head moves. Even if the defragging takes less time,
because there's less fragmentation, the head still has to move numerous
times to accomplish the defragging whether there are a few fragmented
files or many. It's not like the software "know" innately which files
are fragmented, and only works on those files. It has to read all the
files each time you defrag.

Actually, that information is in the directory entries. If the
file does not have to be worked on, then it need not be read.

[snip]

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko