How often should one "defrag" their harddrive?
Moderators: szchinagoshop, Johnny 5
Forum rules
- Calavera
- Fighting Mongooses
- Posts: 1708
- Joined: Sat Mar 26, 2016 2:41 am
How often should one "defrag" their harddrive?
I've always heard that it is important to keep your drives free of fragments by defraging it regularly. Just how often should I be doing it? I'm a hardcore gamer/computer user in general so I like to keep my PC running in tip top shape. I currently defrag all of my drives twice a day. Once in the morning and once in the evening, usually no more than 12 hours apart. Is this often enough to ensure optimal performance? I don't want to lose any FPS in my games due to fragments floating around.
- Dr. Zoidberg
- Site Admin
- Posts: 23094
- Joined: Tue Feb 03, 2015 2:33 am
Re: How often should one "defrag" their harddrive?
U wanna defrag that drive all nite
And defrag it every day!
Or do it once a month. Whatever.
And defrag it every day!
Or do it once a month. Whatever.
- melancholy
- Global Mod
- Posts: 2095
- Joined: Sat Mar 26, 2016 1:32 am
- Location: Indiana
Re: How often should one "defrag" their harddrive?
I don’t think anyone can determine how much you should be defragging. It’s more of a personal choice, really. Asking around the internet is just going to get you a ton of opinions. Some will say they defrag all the time. Some say it’s a sin to defrag. Well I say forget all that. If your hard drive feels full of fragments, then go ahead and get in a good defrag.
Me personally, I defrag every morning right before my shower. I always feel like getting the defrag out of my hard drive first thing in the morning sets me up for a more relaxed day. And if it ends up being a rough day at work, I’ll sometimes decide to defrag a second time, just to get the day’s stress out of my hard drive.
Another big question I know a lot of people ask is if you should use any special utilities to defrag with. Sure, you can use a hands-on approach to get the job done, but I feel you really work the most fragments out when you use a third party tool made to stimulate ALL the bits on the hard drive. Maybe in my younger days, back when I’d defrag several times a day, I would be releasing my fragments so quickly that it didn’t matter what I was using to do it. But now that I’m older, I like to have less frequent but much more thorough defrags, which is something that’s harder to accomplish by hand.
Now my wife, she doesn’t defrag nearly as much as me. I will try to convince her to defrag, but she is usually too tired to start defragging late at night when she gets home. She mostly only defrags on her days off while the kids are at school. And while she will occasionally use a third party tool if she’s desperate to get her fragments out, most of the time she only wants to defrag with my hard drive inside her case. Which is fine by me, because then we can both defrag at the same time.
So yeah, forget the opinions of other people. If you think defragging will help your performance, then whip out that hard drive and empty your fragments right into the recycle bin!
Me personally, I defrag every morning right before my shower. I always feel like getting the defrag out of my hard drive first thing in the morning sets me up for a more relaxed day. And if it ends up being a rough day at work, I’ll sometimes decide to defrag a second time, just to get the day’s stress out of my hard drive.
Another big question I know a lot of people ask is if you should use any special utilities to defrag with. Sure, you can use a hands-on approach to get the job done, but I feel you really work the most fragments out when you use a third party tool made to stimulate ALL the bits on the hard drive. Maybe in my younger days, back when I’d defrag several times a day, I would be releasing my fragments so quickly that it didn’t matter what I was using to do it. But now that I’m older, I like to have less frequent but much more thorough defrags, which is something that’s harder to accomplish by hand.
Now my wife, she doesn’t defrag nearly as much as me. I will try to convince her to defrag, but she is usually too tired to start defragging late at night when she gets home. She mostly only defrags on her days off while the kids are at school. And while she will occasionally use a third party tool if she’s desperate to get her fragments out, most of the time she only wants to defrag with my hard drive inside her case. Which is fine by me, because then we can both defrag at the same time.
So yeah, forget the opinions of other people. If you think defragging will help your performance, then whip out that hard drive and empty your fragments right into the recycle bin!
-
- Wrestling Mod
- Posts: 1925
- Joined: Sat Mar 26, 2016 4:55 pm
Re: How often should one "defrag" their harddrive?
I actually defragged right before logging on here.
- Calavera
- Fighting Mongooses
- Posts: 1708
- Joined: Sat Mar 26, 2016 2:41 am
Re: How often should one "defrag" their harddrive?
Mel you make defragging sound so dirty! It is a natural feeling for all disks hard and floppy to want to defrag. Although in my experience it is a waste of time to defrag a floppy disk. Pretty much 99 percent of the time attempting to defrag a floppy ends in failure. Those third party tools you mentioned can sometime successfully defrag your floppy but if you find that even the third party tools still end with an error message then you might as well just uninstall them because your defragging days are now behind you.
- Roofus
- Slippin' Jimmy
- Posts: 1799
- Joined: Sat Mar 26, 2016 4:03 am
Re: How often should one "defrag" their harddrive?
Once in the morning and once at night.
- Calavera
- Fighting Mongooses
- Posts: 1708
- Joined: Sat Mar 26, 2016 2:41 am
- ian
- Null Dream Team
- Posts: 3776
- Joined: Sun Mar 27, 2016 2:36 am
Re: How often should one "defrag" their harddrive?
I recently ran a defrag on a younger model.
She was from 1996.
A stunning IBM that’s been neglected as of late.
She was from 1996.
A stunning IBM that’s been neglected as of late.
If I should Die Hard Arcade before I Alan Wake.
PREY the Lords of Lore my Soul Calibur to Take-Two Interactive.
PREY the Lords of Lore my Soul Calibur to Take-Two Interactive.
-
- WHOA-OH BLACK BETTY
- Posts: 868
- Joined: Sat Jan 09, 2021 1:31 am
- Calavera
- Fighting Mongooses
- Posts: 1708
- Joined: Sat Mar 26, 2016 2:41 am
Re: How often should one "defrag" their harddrive?
He is more than safe if she is a 1996. That is 25 years ago! If she was a car she'd be considered an antique!
- ian
- Null Dream Team
- Posts: 3776
- Joined: Sun Mar 27, 2016 2:36 am
Re: How often should one "defrag" their harddrive?
Be able to defrag my athlon XP legally soon as well.
Although I’d feel a bit like a creep defragging a HDD that young.
Although I’d feel a bit like a creep defragging a HDD that young.
If I should Die Hard Arcade before I Alan Wake.
PREY the Lords of Lore my Soul Calibur to Take-Two Interactive.
PREY the Lords of Lore my Soul Calibur to Take-Two Interactive.
-
- WHOA-OH BLACK BETTY
- Posts: 868
- Joined: Sat Jan 09, 2021 1:31 am
Re: How often should one "defrag" their harddrive?
The best defragmenter was Windows XP. The visuals were awesome. Does anybody know how to set up an XP style defragmenter display?
- Calavera
- Fighting Mongooses
- Posts: 1708
- Joined: Sat Mar 26, 2016 2:41 am
Re: How often should one "defrag" their harddrive?
I had to look that up as I'd forgotten that the XP defrag looked any different than other versions of Windows.
I use a program called O&O Defrag. It doesn't look exactly like the old XP defrag but it does give you some visuals.
I've been using it for quite awhile now and I'd recommend it to anyone looking for an alternative to the built-in Windows defragger.
-
- WHOA-OH BLACK BETTY
- Posts: 868
- Joined: Sat Jan 09, 2021 1:31 am
Re: How often should one "defrag" their harddrive?
Cheers Calavera
- ian
- Null Dream Team
- Posts: 3776
- Joined: Sun Mar 27, 2016 2:36 am
Re: How often should one "defrag" their harddrive?
Cal, you can defrag me anytime!
If I should Die Hard Arcade before I Alan Wake.
PREY the Lords of Lore my Soul Calibur to Take-Two Interactive.
PREY the Lords of Lore my Soul Calibur to Take-Two Interactive.
-
- WHOA-OH BLACK BETTY
- Posts: 868
- Joined: Sat Jan 09, 2021 1:31 am
Re: How often should one "defrag" their harddrive?
Defragmentation is like chiropractic for a computer.