7 replies to this topic

[1984]

Hi read a post where you stated that defraging the hard drive frequently wears it out. Can you explain exactly what mechanics are involved in defraging, and how it wears out the hard drive?

thank you sir.

[zaphirer]

I'm not sure that DJLizard drops by all that often...
Defragging (anyone correct me if I'm wrong, I'm basically just reasoning it out) is simply copying a file and placing it in a DIFFERENT PHYSICAL portion of the hard drive. That way, relevent files are closer together and can be read faster. I suppose that constantly defragging could potentially be damaging since dealing with moving parts always means something has a chance to go wrong, the more so since you're putting your hard drive through all its reads/writes constantly.

[krit86lr]

DjLizard is here everyday. Also, LOTW you can PM him.

[DjLizard]

Someone brought it to my attention that after one or two nights of scheduled defragmentation, subsequent defrags take only moments to complete. It's still quite a big waste of time, since using your computer for two years and then defragmenting it still doesn't really show any visible performance increase that I've ever witnessed.

[lokoike]

DjLizard, on May 1 2006, 11:30 PM, said:

It's still quite a big waste of time, since using your computer for two years and then defragmenting it still doesn't really show any visible performance increase that I've ever witnessed.

Yeah, that was kind of my feeling as well. I've done defrags on all different machines running all different OSes and all different types of hardware, and I have yet to actually notice any performance boost after a defrag. And since I'm pretty sure you've worked on a lot more computers than I have, and you feel the same way, that basically confirms what I thought.

Theoretically, disk defragmentation sounds like a really good idea, but in reality, I just don't see how it helps. That said, I still defrag my HD, in hopes that perhaps I actually am shaving off a few tenths of sec or so, and I just don't realize it.

[Humpty]

Just wondering how many run with prefetching turned off.

Some may not realise that the layout.ini file works with the defragger to place your boot files for the fastest boot.

I set my prefetch to 2-boot only and use Perfect Disk to control the layout.ini file.

Quote:

n order to further improve the efficiency of this prefetching operation, Windows XP will regularly analyze the contents of the map files, compile a list of the directories and files, organize them in the order in which they are loaded, and save this information in a file called Layout.ini in the \Windows\Prefetch folder. It will then schedule disk defragmenter to run on a regular basis and use the information in the Layout.ini file to relocate all of the directories and files listed to a contiguous area of the disk.

[Andavari]

Humpty, on May 2 2006, 05:52 AM, said:

It will then schedule disk defragmenter to run on a regular basis and use the information in the Layout.ini file to relocate all of the directories and files listed to a contiguous area of the disk.

It's basically running this "I think":
%windir%\system32\Rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks

Anyways, I'm gonna take DJLizard's advice which is always spot-on and reliable as I haven't defragged in days and I haven't noticed any degraded performance as of yet.

[DjLizard]

ProcessIdleTasks is correct. Anyway, I have a high traffic hard drive at home (creates and deletes about 5-20 GB a day) and I haven't defragmented in a long time. I doubt that it would change anything (performance wise) if I did, anyway. I have noticed remarkable slowdown when I've got less than 5 GB free space on that drive (120GB max) and it gets worse with less free space.