How Often Should I Defrag? - Comments Page 2

I have discovered over the years that PC performance degrades noticeably when ever the disk is more than 65-70% full. Try to keep your disk drive under 50% for best performance.

I also use Auslogics Disk Defrag tool and Optimize my disk each time. The Optimize feature moves frequently used files to the fastest locations on the disk and improves performance.

An external drive can be quite useful for keeping your C: drive clean and

In a "Windows 7 Forum" discussion on CNET one fella mentioned the following (which prompted me to quit using my third-party defragger):
Windows Vista and Windows 7 have what is know as Pre-Fetch. This is basically a list of all the applications you use more often. Windows creates and updates this list often, depending on what you do with your computer. Because of this, it sets your most used applications to be access faster.
...other defragmenters see this as fragmented files...when you run them, you are un-doing the possition of applications based on the Prefetch...Then after 3 days or so, Windows will relocate the Prefetch applications again.
You will noticed a slight slow down for about 3 day - until Windows re-builds the Prefetch and repositions the applications more often used.
http://forums.cnet.com/7726-19411_102-5196894.html?tag=nl.e497

You can never defrag too often. Bad HDD's fail and good ones seem to last forever. I have some that are 10+ years old still serving duty as main drives for servers built with Pentium 3's. My point is dont be stingy on the defraggin!!!

My main Desktop is a budget Athlon x2 4400+ with 3 gigs of DDR2, Geforce 220 GT, 220 gig main drive, and a 500 gig secondary drive. This PC will boot in less than 45 seconds and runs smooth and fast considering its internals. It always outperforms similar systems according to PC Pitstops Pit Test. I use the Pit test to help me keep all our PC's at home working properly. It gives consistent test scores that seem to be inline with the overall feel of the system. Ive trusted them for years.

My point? The Pit test scored my main HDD with 78 MB/sec. The average is 50. Thats a huge boost. Im also seeing the drives great performance help the processor operate more efficently.

Im using Auslogics disk defrag. After im done with my pc for the day I open up Auslogics, select defrag and optimize, then check the box that says shutdown after complete. Im always defragged and OPTIMIZED. I enjoyed the article but cant help to wonder........Are we still debating this??? Is this real?? Who in their right mind would ever say you should never defrag? These people who never defrag are suffering with lousy performance that increasingly gets worse for what? So they can suffer with that terrible performance for a few more years? How much time have they wasted in that HDD life buy allowing it to operate so inefficiently? In my opinion defragging constantly everyday like I do is less damaging to a HDD than letting it get fragmented.

I spend lots of time researching stocks, and get a lot of newsletters about them. All in addition to the bs emails my friends send. Lots of stuff goes in and out of my computer, so I like to keep up with maintenance - but I don't do updates or scans automatically. I consider auto updating to be a dangerous practice, since you have no control over what you are getting. How do you think you got all those search engines, browsers, and task bars you never asked for?

I try to do it all manually, but keep it organized and simple so that it doesn't take forever. I have a schedule that goes something like this:
Mon,Wed,Fri: Run full scan with anti-virus at end of day and use auto-shutdown when finished.
Tues,Thur,Sat: run Malwarebytes full scan during lunch.
Every morning: update antivirus, and antimalware.
Sunday: Run full anti-malware, full anti-virus, system tools full disk check, CCleaner registry cleaner, then disk cleaner, and finally Iobit smart-defrag full optimize.

All this on Sunday goes on while I watch a Nascar race or NFL game, so it doesn't require additional time.

Over the years, I found that I lost more hard drives from viruses, and spyware than from disk
mechanical failure. Since I established this maintenance program, I have not lost a single drive, and I don't have to worry about some update popping up right when I"m in the middle of doing something.

I disagree with you about defragmenting. It should be done often. We do it daily, because we play a lot of games, both online and PC games. It improves performance significantly. Our hard disks last for a very long time. Also, analyzing the disk is a waste of time, because by the time that it says there is a problem you will need a professional to take care of it! And all that time you wasted, your computer could have been running faster. Sometimes I will defrag more than once, because I like to get my time down to about twenty minutes. You have a lot of fragmented files if it takes longer than that. And I know your analyzer will say you don't need to do anything, but you should. Plus, you sound like a bit of a hypocrite, saying that you have this program that defrags constantly, and we should do it weekly or monthly, or whenever our system is so severely backed up that the analyzer says to do it. Come on, be honest with your readers! You do it daily, you do it often. Telling us to do the complete opposite seems a bit weird on your part. I'm going to be wary of your advice from now on, after this. Also, analyzing the disk is wasteful if that could really wear it out. Just defrag already!