On XP, when I go to DEFRAG, it oftentimes will say "you don't need to defrag".. why is this?

Question

I can't understand why they would put this little addendum to it when it is obviously you have some kind of preventive maintenance in mind. I do anyway because it does make the computer run smoother.

Answer 1

You can defrag a drive only when its fragmented, if the files are not fragmented, the defragger does not need to move anything about. However the word preventive actually means that its not advisable to wait until the drive is completely fragmented and runs out of free space. Its important to check periodically to see how fragmented it is and also run regular diskcleanups to ensure there is enough free space. Some people adopt the preventive approach by installing a tool that automatically checks and keeps the fragmentation under control. Once its fragmented beyond a certain level, it might take a long time to defrag besides causing performance issues like lags and freezes.

Answer 2

ok, when windows saves a new file to your hard drive, it puts it anywhere and everywhere and records the location in something called a file allocation table. when you defragment, it puts all those files in serial order. defragging once every 2 or 3 months is enough, unless you do some heavy data usage with the computer. defragging too often can put a LOT of wear and tear on your hard drive and make it fail prematurely. besides, the performance gain you get from defragging is extremely minuscule in most systems, and if windows says you don't need to do it, they're absolutely right.

Answer 3

Before defraging windows will check the drive for fragmentation and if it is not bad it will tell you that the volume does not need to be defraged. But as you said if you know what you are doing and your defraging for a reason just can just tell windows to defrag anyhow. But not everyone knows what they are doing and defraging your drive to often can shorten the lifespan of your hard drive.

Answer 4

It just means that your computer is clean enough that defrag won't help it much, but if you have any red "fragment" lines, you probably should defrag anyway to avoid problems in the future.
A regular schedule can be set up to do this for you so you don't have to remember it the next time.

Answer 5

Windows recommends defragging your hard drive when it reaches about 10% defragmentation, anything lower than that and you get the message that you stated.
You can still defrag your hard drive even if you get the message that it doesn't need to be defragged.

Answer 6

Just because the performance increase from defraging when you don't really need it (i.e. you don't have many fragmented files) is minimal compared to the time it will take to actually defrag it.

In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with keeping a drive defraged.

Answer 7

it does an analysis and if your HDD isnt too fragged, it will pop up. you can use other defragging software that will defrag it just cuz you say so lol. i use auslogics defrag, they have a free version, you can google it. its also much faster than the standard xp defrag. it defragged my 160 gb in under 10 minutes.

Answer 8

The reason to defrag is to speed up your hard drive seek times.
You can even though you don't need to but it won't really do any good.

Defrag is not the same as preventative maintenance.

Clean up the hard drive, get rid of temp files. Scan your hard drive for viruses and trojans to maintain.

Answer 9

The analysis looks at the percentage of fragments on your drive, and tells you that its not necessary, based on the improvement you will see, because it will be a waste of time

Answer 10

very sensible : begin >all programmes >components>process gear>disk defragmenter. After conclude, your PC will participate in quicker (rely on how lengthy you have not defrag it). Merry Christmas.