how often should i do defragmentation?

Question

mine is a new computer, just set it up the day before. is it necessary to perform any of disc cleanup or defrag or clear history?

Answer 1

I would do it once a month.

Answer 2

You certainly don't need to do it yet.

From a technical point of view, it can be as long as 3 months. However, I do mine every month for a number of reasons ...

Its easier to remember once a month, you can do it with all the other more critical routine maintenence tasks and it takes less time than defragging 3 months of scattered files.

PS. Do things like disc cleanup first - why defrag your drive and then delete your unused files, which will create "holes" in your nice tidy data? Also manually set a system restore point before doing your maintenance - just in case - and again afterwards. And don't forget to copy your important data folders/files to something like a pen drive as well.

Answer 3

no sooner than every six months, or longer depending on the size of your disc drive and applications of your computer. there is a cost for wear every time you use defragmentaion. usualy only do this if you need to increase disc space, or are wittnessing a slow down in a running program.

it is better to use the disk cleanup, clear temporary internet files, history and cookies at least once a month. but if you clear your cookies, be advised, you will have to reinsert your username and passwords to sites you frequent.

you can always check your disc, by using the analyze function in the tools menu. but you do not necessarily need to defragment, just because it says so. it is only an advice to inform you of the status of fragmented data. which may be or may not be sereverly affecting your operating speed. since discs are much slower, than any other of your computer access times. and remember it takes a long time to defragment these newer high volume drives. even with the newer high speed computers, since the speed read/write and access times of the disc drives have not increased all that much. even with a 10k rpm drive, your computer is limited by the speed of this drive. but is still moving large amounts of data around.

and before you defragment, always remember to empty your recycle bin, delete any programs or data you no longer use or need. and do a disc clean up, before defragmenting. cause if you do these things after defrag, you are just causing your disc to become fragmented again. and is defeating the purpose of defragmenting, right off the bat.

Answer 4

Depends upon what you do with your 'puter, but once every 2 weeks is good. If you install and remove a lot of software, then more often is recommended. If you feel it is taking a long time to do things then defrag. Also if it takes a long time to boot up or shutdown Defrag is the #1 to improve performance.

Answer 5

Just newly set-up -- I'd let it go for now.

For me, I would suggest if you do not have it now, that you purchase/install some sort of firewall/security software on the new computer to make sure that you can be free of the nasty computer viruses that are out there.

As far as de-frag of the HDD -- I do a de-frag about once a month -- but that is because I am a Financial Manager (Cost/Price Estimator), I do a LOT of Office type documents (Spreadsheets, Word Processing, Graphics), and also am enjoying the Digital SLR That I have (and I just spent approx 5 weeks on the road and took thousands of images -- something that would have been cost prohibitive with a 35mm SLR camera).

So with all these massive files (and I shoot with my Digital SLR in .raw format), I am constantly developing, moving, editing, updating, re-categorizing files all the time -- and there is usually a bit of de-frag work that needs to be done on a monthly basis.

Answer 6

Around once a week if you use the Internet a lot, or 2 weeks if not. The more often you defrag your system the quicker it will perform the defrag, if you leave it for ages it can take hours.
Hope this helps.

Answer 7

Clear history and disk cleanup can be done quickly and regularly. Disk Defragmenter will analyze whether or not you have to do it: Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Disk Defragmenter.

Hope that helps!

Answer 8

If you have XP professional window installed. Then click on 'Analyze" button first (on disc defragmenter window), your pc would analyze, if required, it will prompt you to defragment. Otherwise dont defragment.
You can install ccleaner (www.ccleaner.com) & run in once a day to clear junk (history/cookies/temp. internet files etc.) its very good program & available free.

Answer 9

It depends. You should defrag the hard disk if you install some thing new on your computer AND you have a lot of hard disk space.

Defrag is annoying and I wish someone would make hard disk access more efficient.

Answer 10

You don't have to do any of them right away. You can defrag as much as you want, but do it for sure when you check and it tells you to. You can set a maintenance schedule to do it all whenever you want to.

Answer 11

I would recommend you do it monthly. If you are on the pc quite a lot it is surprising how long it takes to defragment even after a week. Come to think of it , mine is due tomorrow. Thanks for reminding.