Advice on defragmenting HDD

[mrleemcc]

I have been using IO orbit software - Smart defrag for sometime and recently i have come accross people saying that this is not good for the pc, has anyone heard of this before as i think it keeps my system running quite well.

Also would anyone recommend any other programs for windows 7 64bit just for the health of the machine?

 

[MickyG]

You could get CCleaner, gets rid of internet and temp files, fixes registry stuff, can be used to remove programs and other such things

As for the defragging, I don't see why it could harm your PC, unless you stop it mid defrag or start moving files around whilst it's defragging

G

 

[Anthony.Ralph]

I was under the impression that win 7 did defragging automatically and as such needed didn't need a third-party application to do it.

Anthony.

 

[mrleemcc]

thanks and i will look into that no defragging might not be required, i wish lol

 

[pengipete]

I was under the impression that win 7 did defragging automatically and as such needed didn't need a third-party application to do it.

Anthony.

Yes and no.

Windows own defragger actually does a pretty good job so it's perfectly okay to let it do it's thing and forget about it. What it can't do - that more powerful defraggers can - is to restructure the order in which data is stored. That can have a substantial impact if - for example - you have a data drive, you'll get better results ordering drive to place the files in alphabetical order at the start of the drive whereas your OS disk will be better off having most used files first.

Since Vista - which also had background defragging - I just have a run with O&O (my preferred defragger) when I have a clear-out of old apps or if I think the system "feels" slow.

 

[Anthony.Ralph]

Yes and no.

Windows own defragger actually does a pretty good job so it's perfectly okay to let it do it's thing and forget about it. What it can't do - that more powerful defraggers can - is to restructure the order in which data is stored. That can have a substantial impact if - for example - you have a data drive, you'll get better results ordering drive to place the files in alphabetical order at the start of the drive whereas your OS disk will be better off having most used files first.

Since Vista - which also had background defragging - I just have a run with O&O (my preferred defragger) when I have a clear-out of old apps or if I think the system "feels" slow.

Thanks for that. Always something new to learn... which is one of the real pleasures of computers I find.

Anthony.

 

[pengipete]

Absolutely. Not many days go by that I don't find something that challenges things that I thought I already knew as "facts".

Prime example, I should have added in that post that current "best advice" is that defragging should be disabled on SSD's - at least until better wear figures are available. They work differently so fragmentation isn't really a performance issue but current cost/space ratios make it tempting to consolidate space. The worry is that SSDs have a finite number of read/writes before the media degrades. At the moment, the real-world life expectency of SSDs is untested so - to be on the safe side - it's best to disable defragging and indexing.

 

[Sleinous]

Note also that NTFS file systems need very very little defragmentation compared to FAT32

 

[tanil]

For drive maintenance I run diskcleanup (I second CCleaner!) and I have one of the popular real time defraggers that run in the background which also has some additional useful features. I changed from the built in defraggr as it didnt seem to defrag completely and just takes too long.

 

[Gorman]

Absolutely. Not many days go by that I don't find something that challenges things that I thought I already knew as "facts".

Prime example, I should have added in that post that current "best advice" is that defragging should be disabled on SSD's - at least until better wear figures are available. They work differently so fragmentation isn't really a performance issue but current cost/space ratios make it tempting to consolidate space. The worry is that SSDs have a finite number of read/writes before the media degrades. At the moment, the real-world life expectency of SSDs is untested so - to be on the safe side - it's best to disable defragging and indexing.

Note also that NTFS file systems need very very little defragmentation compared to FAT32

These are the points that people should take from this thread i think.

• If you have an SSD never defrag it, it will not accomplish anything as they get no benefit from sequential data and as pengipete points out you will just eat into the set number of writes.
  
• NTFS (see all drives) drives do not need to be defragged as much as Fat32 used to be, even then we are going back a long time. NTFS drives on a Vista or 7 machine should not need defragging more than once a year or so if used very intensively.
  
• Windows will handle defrag, temp file / registry cleanup etc far better than most paid for third party programs, if you configure those features properly

 

[MickyG]

• If you have an SSD never defrag it, it will not accomplish anything as they get no benefit from sequential data and as pengipete points out you will just eat into the set number of writes.
  
• NTFS (see all drives) drives do not need to be defragged as much as Fat32 used to be, even then we are going back a long time. NTFS drives on a Vista or 7 machine should not need defragging more than once a year or so if used very intensively.
  
• Windows will handle defrag, temp file / registry cleanup etc far better than most paid for third party programs, if you configure those features properly

Well, I never knew that about SSD's (though I didn't really do much research on them tbh, my bad )

Also, what can be configured for temp file/registry cleanup? There was a thread that pengipete responded to where he discussed about moving certain files to free up disk space, would these be one of the cleanup ways?

G

 

[Gorman]

The system maintenance wizard and the disk cleanup tool will handle most of your unused / temp file issues and the performance wizard will check for the common causes of slowdown.

The registry isnt like the old school registry of XP, it doesnt get messy in a way that would really affect system performance. I would only manually edit the reg to fix a specific issue and wouldnt trust a third party company to delete stuff it "thinks" isnt needed.

I would also highly recommend using the backup utilities in 7, enable drive protection and use the backup tools if you have space. That way if your registry does get fudged you can simply roll back.

 

[MickyG]

Thanks for that Gorman, some useful info, I'll have a play around when I'm at home having a look at setting those up. I've got the backup setup on a monthly cycle (I don't often put things on so monthly is fine).

G

 

[Bill R TechSpec]

Misinformation About Defrag

I have been using IO orbit software - Smart defrag for sometime and recently i have come accross people saying that this is not good for the pc, has anyone heard of this before as i think it keeps my system running quite well.

Also would anyone recommend any other programs for windows 7 64bit just for the health of the machine?

CCleaner is good and of course you should have an AntiVirus as well as Anti-Spyware like Malware Bytes and SuperAntiSpyware

As for defragmenting "not being good for the PC", whomever said that probably does not understand what fragmentation is, how it affects the disk and what defrag does (or they thought you were using an SSD instead of an HDD).

Fragmentation is basically broken-up pieces of files and free space randomly scattered all over your disk. The disk has to work a lot harder to save files in pieces and then to find them again when the files are accessed.

This really slows your computer down, but it also wears out the disk, as the more the disk is used, the faster it wears out, so defragmenting actually increases the disk's life as it will suffer less wear-and-tear if it is not fragmented when it is used.

There are many types of defrag programs.

Basic defragmenting finds all the pieces of a file and puts them together, saving time.

More advanced defrag programs also consolidate the free space and the better ones do all this without draining your PC's resources. The best one also prevents fragmentation before it happens.

Personally I prefer commercial defragmenters as they are more robust and the better ones can defrag while you use the PC so there is no need to schedule a defrag, etc.

Here is a Top 10 Reviews side-by-side comparison of the best defrag programs around:

http://disk-defragmenter-software-review.toptenreviews.com/

Select a program and install a free trial. The better defrag programs are automatic.

The gold medal winner in the above review can defrag while using the PC (complete transparency) and it also prevents fragmentation.

The best defrag programs are very fast and the top placers will defrag while the PC is in use with no problems.


Bill R TechSpec
...

 

[onlynik]

Run from an elavated command prompt:
schtasks /Change /Disable /TN "\Microsoft\Windows\Defrag\ScheduledDefrag"

This will turn defrag off for SSD's

 

[Wozza63]

i use auslogics disk defrag

 

[ghphoto]

Hi,

with the SSD's i had also read that they should not be used for photoshop scratch disc's or virtual memory, because information has to be written to them in larger chunks than normal drives, because of the memory allocations, you could in effect degrade the read write speeds with small amounts of information being written, because it has to make the data bundle up to a minimum value, before dumping it to the drive, then deleting what is not needed.

I had also read that RAID setups should not be defragged, but i need to research this a bit further, anyone have any further on this?

Take care.