Defrag or not?

Question

Hi should i defrag my computer or not? Ive a friend who worked for IBM and he told me that whilst working there he was asked/ told not to defrag his computer as it can wear out the hard drive over time, is this possible? Any sensible advice appriciated.

Answer 1

You should defrag at least once a month, and this is not going to take away any life from your disk that will be noticeable......If you look at the average life of a hard drive, running defrag once a month probably would account for less than %.1 of the drives usage.....
Defrag is what keeps your windows operating system running smooth, putting all the clustered files back together.....Unless you defrag your computer 10 times a day, it is not harmfull......

Answer 2

As I understand it , and through my own experience, I'll answer as best I can. If your operating system is Windows Xp then you should avoid using Windows Defrag because it was originally designed for Windows 98 and the function could damage computers using a newer OS. I disliked using it with 98 and it didn't change with my upgrade. It simply takes an eternity and the system is basically crippled to attempt other tasks while running Defrag. On the other hand, I began using a product called System Mechanic ( you can download a free trial @ iolo.com or System Mechanic) and I now defrag regularly. The software allows you to (1) Defrag your memory separately which returns your previously allocated Ram to an available state. My computer instantly responds in quickness and reaction time. Secondly, you can decide on several types of system Defrag and continue about your business. The software will notify you of it's completion and make recommendations. I've always believed that my system benefited from Defrag by the way it performed after wards and I've never had a hard drive to become injured with Defrag. The difference now ? I am not held prisoner as the methodical search for fragmentation's hypnotizes me into unconsciousness. In case you are wondering, I do not work for nor am I affiliated with the software company I mentioned. I just like the way it works for me. Good Luck.

Answer 3

This is a double edge sword here. All FAT/FAT32 drives should be defraged always no doubt about it. When MS came out with NTFS they should you would never need to defrag your hard drive. After a lot of debate MS finally conceded that NTFS drives do in fact need to be defragemented.

So in short yes, it is safe to defrag your drive. I do this daily at 5am every morning. It moves the scattered files back into logical blocks which in turn avoid the drive having to look at multiple sectors to find the complete file. Lets say program X is 1.8megs in size and is scattered across 30 different sectors on the drive. Program X is causing alot of lost clusters using this many sectors, (not to mention the disk has to work harder to find the whole program). Defragmenting the drive might say program x only needs 12 sectors to be stored safely. Hence you opened up 18 sectors for data. The exact nu matrix for this is a whole different question and will not be covered here, sorry...

Answer 4

It does cause additional immediate wear but over the long term, I doubt it because with a lot of fragmentation of files, the hard drive works much harder to retrieve files.

Answer 5

Defrag ur system man. u dont need to worry any thing abt. defrag is gud for ur windows health

Answer 6

I defrag every day,,,get rid of the junk. No way it will wear out your harddrive.

Answer 7

no, If you dont then the drive spinns looking for data. and will stop and spinn the other way. That is what wears out a drive. "Disc Thrashing"

Answer 8

yes ,defrag is a good thing.diskkeeper is a great app to do.or just do it yourself.but do it.it fixes bad sectors.
god bless

Answer 9

If you do it once a month, it will prob take like 15 minutes each time. That's nothing.