How to know if defragmentation is necessary ? Options

[emil.sekula]

Hello,

How can I know if defragmentation is necessary or not on my disk ? After analyze there is not any message.

Regards,

[DennisD]

Hi emil.sekula, and welcome to Piriform.

I don't think there is any hard and fast rule, although the built in XP defrag tool tells you whether your disk should be defragged or not.

But there are so many different factors involved, that isn't necessarily a good indication. Things like how big is your drive, how much free space you have, all come into the equation.

I think the best practice is to set yourself a defrag time scale, maybe once a week if you have heavy usage, or even once a month.

You could check the file list after analysing, and if the files you use a lot are pretty fragmented, then that's a case when a defrag would probably be well worth doing.

Keep in mind that defrag programs usually need about 12-15% free disk space to defrag successfully.

Hope that helps, but if you're still not sure, by all means post back.