How often should you defragment your computer?

Question

I have just gotten a notebook. I have been told you should defragment your computer daily,weekly or not at all. Any ideas for a healthy computer?

Answer 1

monthly is good but it depends how much crap you are doing to your computer

Answer 2

Why should we defragment machines?

When you defrag your machine, you are making your machine work better. Defragging puts all of the pieces needed to run your program in a close proximity to each other on the hard drive. When you delete programs in your hard drive, you leave empty spaces where pieces of the program were inserted during installation. When you load a new program, the computer goes to the first available slot to place all the parts, so your program could be loading pieces at the beginning, middle and end. This forces your hard drive to hunt all over in accessing all the pieces and putting them together to run your application. By defragging the machine, all the program pieces will be moved and put together so your hard drive can run optimally and access programs as fast as it is capable of doing. In Win98, the machine is smart enough to realize which program you use most often and make them more accessible in the hard drive itself so that it can be accessed even more quickly.

Defragging your machine should be part of your regular maintenance. Twice a month should keep your machine running at optimal level. If you load and delete programs often, then defrag more often.

Before defragging your machine, close all open Windows programs.

Step 1:
- Start/Programs/Accessories/System Tools/ScanDisk
- Follow this shorthand until you open ScanDisk. If you have not done a ScanDisk in awhile, I would suggest clicking on Thorough. If you have a weekly schedule for maintenance, then just the Standard will be sufficient. Select the hard drive you wish to scan and click on start. After this process is finished, go to the next step.

Step 2:
- Start/Programs/Accessories/System Tools/Disk Defragmenter
- Follow the shorthand steps until you open Disk Defragmenter.
- Select the drive to defrag and click ok and it will defrag your hard drive.

Another way :
Double click on My Computer and right click on the drive you wish to defrag. Select properties. Go to the Tool tab. You can select the button Check Now by Error-Checking Status to use the ScanDisk tool, then select the button Defragment Now by Defragmentation status.

Depending on how large your hard drive is, this process will take anywhere from 20 minutes to over an hour.

It is advisable to do this at the end of the day when you don't need to use your machine.

Answer 3

Once a month or so if you feel that your computer is slowing down. However the size of your hard drive, and partitions if you have them will determine how long it takes. For example, if you have a 80 Gig hard drive, with no partitions, it may take several hours to defrag your hard drive. If that same hard drive has 6 partitions, you can defrag them whenever you choose and it may take up to 45 minutes for each.

The amount of data on the hard drive and partitions will ultimately determine how fast your defrag takes. Generally you should defrag at night when you go to bed so you don't lose the use of your computer.

Answer 4

It depends on the OS and file structure in place. FAT and FAT32 tend to easily fragment so the above suggestions are all good. NTFS is quite different and realistic does not need to be defragmented often, if at all. It tends to be less a performance problem based on fragmentation of an NTFS volume and more Windows programs in memory or registry issues. With Linux/Unix, defragmentation is really not necessary particularly with Reiser or Ext2/3. But...it doesn't hurt to run it once a month, regardless.

Answer 5

Some say that it is required every month. Others belive that because the data is being moved around so much, it is hard on the drive.

Me... I don't do it at all...

Call me crazy but I dont feel like spending 6 hours defragmenting a drive when I get no extra performance in return.

You can't get thoes 6 hours back :P

Answer 6

I never do!!! I use a Solid State Drive (SSD) and they do not need any defragmentation; just a TRIMming once a week. But more seriously, the rule of thumb is once a month. So chose a day: like every 1st day of the month and stick to it. I know that it depends on how much input/ouput on your hard drive, but even if that is low you should defrag anyway; it will just be faster to do so...

Answer 7

It depends on usage really, but at least once a month. I use a little program called Diskkeeper that runs a defrag anytime my machine is in screen saver mode, works really well.

Answer 8

i just ogt a notebook too and i don't really know what you mean by defragment but any time i get into something that i wasn't supposed to be in and i think it may have given my computer a virus or my computer starts to go slow i immediately return the computer to a earlier state or just restore the computer to just how it was when i first bought it. all of this should be in the manual installed on your notebook or at least mine is but it took my like two weeks to notice it and know what it was. hope this helps.

Answer 9

Here is a typical maintenance weekly schedule and sequence

- Disk Cleanup - see System Tools
- Anti-spyware update & scan
- Defrag - see System Tools
- Anti-virus Update & scan
- Check disk - see Tools section of Disk Properties, then click Check Now (and run after reboot)

Do this to Keep Your Computer Alive

Answer 10

Every 6 Months

Answer 11

You should do this at least once a month, but when you do the analysis, the PC will tell you if it needs defragmenting or not.