what is the difference between disk clean up and disc defragment ?When should you use?For what purpose?

Question

Do either help puter run faster?THANKS!!!!!!!!!!!

Answer 1

Disk Defragmenter Utility
As advanced as hard drives have become, one item they are not very good at is housekeeping, or maybe that should be drive keeping. When files are created, deleted, or modified it's almost a certainty they will become fragmented. Fragmented simply means the file is not stored in one place in its entirety, or what computer folks like to call a contiguous location. Different parts of the file are scattered across the hard disk in noncontiguous pieces. The more fragmented files there are on a drive, the more performance and reliability suffer as the drive heads have to search for all the pieces in different locations. The Disk Defragmenter Utility is designed to reorganize noncontiguous files into contiguous files and optimize their placement on the hard drive for increased reliability and performance.

Accessing Disk Defragmenter
Disk Defragmenter can be opened a number of different ways. The most common methods are listed below.

Start | All Programs | Accessories | System Tools | Disk Defragmenter
Start | Run | and type dfrg.msc in the Open line. Click OK
Start | Administrative Tools | Computer Management. Expand Storage and select Disk Defragmenter
The first two methods take you to a standalone window containing Disk Defragmenter. The last method opens Microsoft Management Console and displays Disk Defragmenter as one of the snap-in modules. In all cases, a window similar to the one below will be displayed.



When Disk Defragmenter first opens (Fig. 01) you'll see a list of the hard drives displayed at the top of the screen. The Estimated Disk Usage Before Defragmentation and Estimated Disk Usage After Defragmentation will be blank until a drive is selected and the Analyze button is clicked. In the screen shot above, I've already analyzed the drives as evidenced by the Session Status showing as Analyzed and the Estimated Disk Usage Before Defragmentation area containing a graphical representation of the drive fragmentation.



After the Analyze button has been clicked and the process completes the window shown above (Fig. 02) opens with a brief recommendation of what action Disk Defragmenter thinks should be taken regarding the drive. It's important to note that this is just a recommendation based on the percentage of fragmented files to total files and doesn't prevent the drive from being defragmented if you feel it needs to be done and might improve system performance. If you want to go ahead and defragment without more information, click the Defragment button. If you're in agreement with their recommendation and don't want to defragment, click the Close button. Click the View Report button to view a more detailed drive analysis.



An Analysis Report contains quite a bit of additional information about the selected drive. The report shown above (Fig. 03) details the File Fragmentation status of drive WXP02-D. The top pane provides Volume information, and as you can see there are 3,851 fragmented files. This may not seem like many fragmented files, but consider that this is only a 20GB drive, which is very small by today's standards, and that 81% of the total drive space is currently unused. Look at the Average Fragments Per File number of 1.04 and this tells you that approximately 4% of the files on the drive are in two or more pieces. My experience has been that when this number reaches 1.05 the message in the quick analysis window (Fig. 02) will recommend defragmenting the drive. The bottom pane, Most Fragmented Files, lists the files in descending order that are the most fragmented.



In spite of the recommendation not to defragment this particular disk, I went ahead and clicked the Defragment button. The results of that choice are shown above (Fig. 04) in the Estimated Disk Usage After Defragmentation section. The graphical representation clearly shows that not only have the red lines depicting fragmented files been eliminated, many of the contiguous files indicated by the blue have been repositioned toward the beginning of the drive, reducing the amount of searching the drive heads have to do to locate a file. The drive in this example is not a system drive, nor does it have a paging file which would be indicated by the lime green Unmovable Files color.



After the defragmentation process completes, clicking the View Report button will bring up the Defragmentation Report (Fig. 05). It takes the exact same form as the Analysis Report (Fig. 03) but shows the post defragmentation results. The Total Files and Average File Size remain identical, but notice that Total Fragmented Files and Total Excess Fragments have been reduced to zero (0) and the Average Fragments Per File is now 1.00, indicating most or all of the files are contiguous. In addition, there are no files listed that did not defragment.

Additional Disk Defragmenter Notes
For the majority of users, the Disk Defragmenter Utility included with XP is sufficient to keep the hard drives in relatively good condition, but it's actually what is known as a Lite or slightly crippled version of Diskeeper, a product made by Executive Software. You may have noticed in Fig. 04 that even after the drive had been defragmented, there were still gaps showing where no files were shown as being present. What are these gaps and why weren't they eliminated by compacting the files to the beginning of the drive? It's due to limitations imposed by the Lite version of Diskeeper supplied with XP. I don't currently have Diskeeper installed, but look at the images below, created from PerfectDisk v5.0 by Raxco Software.

The top image is a drive analysis of the same drive that was used in the previous examples. The analysis was performed immediately after the drive was defragmented using Disk Defragmenter supplied with XP. Using the Legend shown below, we can see that there are a number of details supplied that flesh out the areas shown in Fig. 04 as being Free Space. In reality, this really isn't free space but is the MFT and MFT Zone.







Now look at the image directly below the Legend map. It shows the same drive after being defragmented with PerfectDisk. It shows the same blocks, but notice that a number of the different legend categories have been moved and optimized for even better drive performance. This is essentially the difference between the built in Disk Defragmenter and an upgraded disk defragmentation program. The more sophisticated programs allow you to optimize page files at reboot and a number of other options that are impossible with the stock offering.

Conclusion
If you're an average XP user the standard Disk Defragmenter utility will do a good job of keeping your drives defragmented and help to maintain peak system performance. If you are the type that wants to extract the best possible performance from a system, consider upgrading to one of the premium defragmenter products. Most o them have a free trial available that will showcase the best features each has to offer.

The important point is that whatever product you decide meets your level of need, it doesn't do a bit of good unless the drives are defragmented on a regular basis. Make it a part of your regular system maintenance.


CleanUp
Disk Cleanup Utility
To keep a PC running smoothly, regular maintenance is critical. Many users shy away from maintenance tasks, thinking it is a long, drawn out manual affair, but the Disk Cleanup Utility can easily determine which files on a hard drive may no longer be needed and delete those files. In addition to freeing up potentially significant amounts of hard drive space, using Disk Cleanup on a regular basis can significantly improve system performance.

Starting Disk Cleanup
Disk Cleanup is available on both Home and Professional versions of XP. The utility can be accessed in any of the methods listed below.

Click Start | Programs | Accessories | System Tools | Disk Cleanup
Click Start | Run and in the Open box type cleanmgr and click OK
In Windows Explorer or My Computer, right-click the disk in which you want to free up space, click Properties, click the General tab, and then click Disk Cleanup.
Use the drop down menu arrow to select the drive you want to clean.



Click [OK] and Disk Cleanup will analyze the selected drive to determine the amount of space that can be freed.



Note: Be patient. Analyzing the drive can be a lengthy process depending on drive size and contents.


Once the drive analysis is complete a list of file categories will be presented for your selection.




Instead of automatically proceeding with cleanup once the drive analysis is complete, Disk Cleanup allows you to review the categories of files that can be deleted. Click on any of the categories to display more information relative to that category in the Description section of the window. If you're unsure if you want to delete the files in a category from the description, use the [View Files] button. A complete list of files scheduled for deletion will be displayed in Windows Explorer. Use drag and drop to move any files you want to save to a safe location and leave the category selected. If all the files are to be saved, close the window and then remove the checkmark from the file category so it will not be included in the disk cleanup. After all the categories have been reviewed, click [OK] to begin the disk cleanup process.

File Categories in Disk Cleanup Utility
There are a number of different types of file categories that Disk Cleanup targets when it performs the initial disk analysis. Depending on the individual system, you may or may not have all the categories listed below. An excellent example of this would be Backup Files from a Previous Operating System. If a clean install of XP was performed then this category will not exist. It pays to click on each of the categories and note that the [View Files] button can change depending on the category selected.

Downloaded Program Files

These are ActiveX controls and Java applets downloaded from Web sites that are temporarily stored in the Downloaded Program Files folder. It's not program files or zip files that you have downloaded from other locations.

Temporary Internet Files

This refers to Internet Explorer's cache of Web pages that are stored on the hard drive for quicker viewing. None of your personal web settings are affected by selecting this category, nor does it delete any cookie files.

Recycle Bin

The main thing to be aware of in this category is that it only refers to the Recycle Bin for the selected hard drive or partition. This is important since XP uses an individual Recycle Bin for each drive and partition, not just one as is the case in some Windows versions.

Temporary Remote Desktop Files

These files are the result of using the Remote Desktop utility. If you repeatedly use Remote Desktop with the same computer or group of computers, leaving these files intact will maintain the speed of future connections. Deleting them will necessitate downloading the remote systems icons and wallpaper the next time a connection is established.

Setup Log Files

These are really pretty useless unless you have a specific reason to go back and see what occurred during XP setup.

Backup Files For Previous Operating System

I mentioned this category earlier as one you may not have, but if you did upgrade from a previous Windows version and selected the option to be able to uninstall XP, it may well exist. It takes some major hard drive space to copy all the files necessary to back up a previous system's core files, drivers, etc. This entry can range anywhere from a few hundred megabytes up to a gigabyte, so unless you are still considering dumping XP this is a good category to select.

Offline Files

Users with slower dialup connections and those using laptops frequently make websites they use often available offline. Depending on how many levels deep you save the sites, they can eat up gigabytes of hard drive space very quickly. Worse than taking up space, the sites often contain outdated information. A good candidate for deletion.

Compress Old Files

Unlike the other categories, Compress Old Files doesn't delete any files from the drive. It compresses files that Windows hasn't accessed for a specified period of time. The files are still available, but there will be a slight increase in access times because the files will be decompressed the next time they are accessed. Note that when Compress Old Files is highlighted an Options button appears. Clicking it will allow you to set the number of days to wait before an unaccessed file is compressed.

There may be other categories that appear in your Disk Cleanup window, but in all cases, highlighting the item will display an explanation of the category in the Description area.

More Options Tab
In addition to the categories that appear on the Disk Cleanup tab, the More Options tab offers additional opportunities for freeing up hard drive real estate. There is nothing on this tab that isn't available elsewhere within XP in stand alone fashion, but having them grouped here does serve as a convenient reminder.




In Windows XP there are three choices available on the More Options tab: Windows Components, Installed Programs, and System Restore.

Windows Components

The Cleanup button in the Windows Components section launches the Windows Components Wizard. Select a general category of components and drill down using the Details button to locate the desired Windows component.

Installed Programs

The Cleanup button in the Installed Programs section opens the Add/Remove Programs dialog box. Any installed program can be removed by selecting the individual program and clicking the Change/Remove button. You cannot batch programs together to be removed. Each removal operation must be treated as a separate entity.

System Restore
Clicking the Cleanup button in the System Restore section opens a dialog box where it asks if you are sure you want to delete all but the most recent restore point. The difference between using this option and going directly to System Restore is that you have no option to selectively delete restore points with this method. It's "all but most recent" or nothing when accessed via Disk Cleanup. Click Yes or No depending on your choice.

Post Disk Cleanup Procedures
Using Disk Cleanup will almost certainly rid your system of a substantial amount of unneeded files. You could stop here and not suffer any ill consequences, but there are a lot of gaps and empty spaces on the hard drive where the files were removed. This would be an excellent time to run Disk Defragmenter to organize the hard drive into contiguous sections. The hard drive heads will spend less time seeking all the pieces of a file and you'll see another performance boost.

Answer 2

Disk cleanup - removes unnecessary files like temporary files and stuff in the recycle bin.

Defrag - rearranges large files so they are in adjacent disk sectors rather than scattered around the hard drive.

You should run these utility programs two or three times a year. More often if you manipulate a lot of files.

Doing so will increase the efficiency of the HD a bit, but it won't be very noticeable unless your machine was really crammed with junk files or extremely fragmented.

Another thing you might want to do, is delete unnecessary Internet files using the TOOLS menu in Internet Explorer. Click Tools> Internet Options> General tab - DELETE.

Try installing Ccleaner... free from www.filehippo.com... it does a pretty good job.

Answer 3

Disc Defragment

Answer 4

Clean up looks for old temp files that can be removed and are taking up space. Defragment reorganizes the files on the drive in a more efficient way, so accessing files takes less time.

Defrag can improve performance if it hasn't been done lately.

Answer 5

disk clean up delete files that are not essential for your puter to work like temp files, program files, and setup files,

disc defragment looks for fragmented pieces of files and put them closer together for faster accessing.

Both help computer run faster disc defragment is one of the main things you do when you want to run faster as oppose to disk clean up

Answer 6

Disk clean up cleans out the temp folder, temp internet files, and recycle bin. Disk defragmenter checks the harddrive to find areas where there are huge spaces between files and data. It will take these spaces and files and rearrange them where all the data is together and the free space is at the end. Thus, making your harddrive seek time faster.

Answer 7

Need more details before I can give answer

Answer 8

What a great question