how do I know that my hdd needs to be defrag?

Question

is there any way to know...

Answer 1

not really.....it just depends if you've ever done it before or the time sine you last did it, i recommend doing it around every 6 months. and remember you need at least 15% free hhd space to do it.

Answer 2

As your hard drive moves files and fragments of files back and forth during the normal course of usage the files leave bits and pieces of themselves scattered across the drive. You will know that you need to defrag when your system takes longer and longer to access programs.

The best thing to do is to have a good quality Defrag program running in the background all the time. It will continually keep your files and programs properly coordinated and unless your hard drive is quite full, performance should always remain at peak level.

A good program that works very well seamlessly without any interruption to your work is Diskeeper http://www.diskeeper.com/defrag.asp It isn't free however, but then you get what you pay for. They may have a trial you can demo.

If your system is slow and it should be fast (fairly new system) then defragging will improve it quite a bit.

You can use the Windows defrag, under Accessories/System Tools however it isn't the greatest it will do the job but is extremely slow at doing so and I don't believe it can run in the background. I used it but much prefer a third party product.

Good luck

Answer 3

Yes, there is a way to know. Since you asked that question, it needs defragmented. I defrag mine about twice per week. If you havent defragmented in months, which sounds like the case, it needs it. Even if you never turned your computer on, it wont hurt it a bit. Defrag it at nite before you go to bed as it will likely take a long time since you havent ran it. Do yourself a favor and run it at least once per week, but run disk cleanup first, to get rid of your trash.

Answer 4

Get the IOBit SmartDefrag FOR FREE ! at
http://www.iobit.com/SmartDefrag/download.html
" IOBit SmartDefrag is a hard disk defragmenter that can be used to defragment your hard drive on-demand or it can work in the background, continuously degragmenting your hard drive whenever your computer’s resources are available."

Then find the analyst button and click it.
However, you can defrag your HDD without knowing it needs the defragment or not. Just use this program and it will work behind the scene so you don't have to worry about when to defrag the HDD anyway.

Answer 5

I noticed recently some of my programs were acting just a teensy bit slow. I defraged and they started running faster. It never hurts to defrag.

Answer 6

Well, Defrag it anyway. It doesn't hurt.

Answer 7

when you start the defrag utility it tells you whether you need to or not.