Defragmenting a Hard Drive

[sq764]

Can someone please explain to me what defragmenting a hard drive does and also whether it would be worth it to do so on my beaten down compaq armada? Would it help to tidy things up or even speed up the processor or enhance the performance?

[Suff]

Picture your Hard drive as a Map of the United States.

Files that are used most often in Los Angeles can be misplaced in New York City.

Defraging puts files in the most optimium location for optimium performance.

It does burn juice when your program has to work harder to reach out for files.

In any computer I've ever had.. I defrag monthly. Although , honestly the improvement is minimal. But anything better...is better.

[so.cal.fan]

Defraging puts files in the most optimium location for optimium performance


How do I do that on Windows XP, Suff. ?

[Suff]

most windows same thing

Start menu to
Programs to
accessories to
system tools...................You'll see it there.

[Dick Schmidt]

In addition to defraging frequently (I do it every day, but I'm a heavy user who saves lots of data) I would recommend running a spyware detection program. The one I like best is Ad-Aware, and it is free. You can find it in several places on the internet, just search Google or go directly to the developer: http://www.lavasoftusa.com/

I just this week had a friend complain about how slow his computer had become. He ran Ad-Aware and found 167 pieces of spyware had accumulated on his machine. Each of these is using processor cycles to collect and save data, and also phoning home to report in to the boss. After he ran the program and defragged his hard disk, he reported that his computer was performing some processes 40% faster.

I run Ad-Aware at least once a day, and I have yet to not find at least one piece of spyware. If you download the program, be sure to update it frequently, especially before you run it for the first time. The creators usually update it about twice a week, and are constantly adding new definitions. It now runs about 4 times faster than it used to, and never seems to report any "false positives." Very easy to use and update. Highly recommended.

Dick

[JustRalph]

Originally posted by Sufferindowns
most windows same thing

Start menu to
Programs to
accessories to
system tools...................You'll see it there.

or...... open "my computer" right click on the C: Drive and hit properties.........click the tools tab.......scandisk and defrag are there.

Once a month is fine for a " normal user" if you are doing it everyday, I can only wonder how hard that is on the hard drive......but then again it works harder searching for data too.....

If you have never done it...........do it. You are probably adding somewhere between 5 and 15% percent seek time looking for files.

[Tom]

Amen to that...I run it more often than I change my socks <G>
I always find a bunch of those little critters infecting my drives.
Too bad there is no way to send "something" terribly destructive back through one of these guys. Perhaps someone will come out with something "interesting" that would allow US to fight back!

[GameTheory]

If you're using XP with an NTFS (as opposed to a FAT32) filesystem on your drive, defragging is a lot quicker.

Fragmentation means that one file may be split up into lots of different bits all over the drive, and the computer has to jump around to grab them all instead of just reading it in sequentially, which is much quicker. If you defrag monthly, the difference will be minimal, but noticeable (it all depends on how much you use your computer and in what ways, which is what causes the defragmentation in the first place.) If you wait like 6 months or have never done it, the effect could be dramatic.

It can speed up access to a database enormously.

Defragging daily seems like overkill, but it doesn't do any harm either....

[sq764]

Of course I try to run it and as its analyzing, it has to shut down because it found an error in one of my folders.. I am about to throw this laptop at the dog.

[hurrikane]

sq,
you probably need to run scandisk. you likely have a few lost allocation units in there. You will probably get a message saying it can't scan because it need control of your system and it will do it on restart. tell it yes and restart.

After that you should be able to defrag.

I see it's your laptop so what I suggest probably won't work for you unless you leave it on all night. I turned on the system maintenance piece in windows and it defrags at 4 in the morning. When I get up it's ready to go. You don't have to do it daily but it's automatic for me so I never am inconvienenced.

Definately Ad-aware.
And thanks for the heads up on the updates. I haven't been there in about 2 mos..will check it out.

[so.cal.fan]

Thanks for all the good tips!
I had ad-aware installed, but never used it.
Just did, and it found 4 suspicious files.......I cleaned them out and my computer works BETTER!!!!!
It is really nice to read computer tips here on off-topic.
While most of you guys (and gals) know a lot about them, some of us do not!
Appreciate it!
:)

[Pace Cap'n]

Took your advice and DL'd Ad-Aware, ran it and got 288 little spies.

Question: Ad-Aware said they were quarantined. Do I still need to manually delete them? Or just let A-A deal with them?

Thanks,
Steve

[Storm Cadet]

I win the prize for most files found...I just installed the program and found "387" spies on my computer...probably not too bad since I share it with my family members -3 teen agers!

Thanks for the info!!!

[Hosshead]

Pace Cap'n -- I was wondering the same thing. Maybe Ralph or Dick or somebody can tell us. I heard you have to be very careful, about which files (it finds), that you delete. And that often, it is not easy to tell. The BB on the AdAware website is
filled with horror stories. However it seems that nobody on this (PA)site has had any problems with it. Can anyone shed some light on this? Thanks.-Hoss

[Derek2U]

Weren't they enron's main lawyers? Hey, why bother with all
that crap? Just go out & buy a new computer. They're awesome
and all for about $700. Thats my Sunday advice from my NeW laptop, wireless etc etc.

[Storm Cadet]

I used Gator as a password protection site. It popped up whenever one of my password protected sites log on screen would come on (like the PA site asking for a password). It stored the many different passwords that I needed for enetering all my sites and programs.

Well, Adware washed them away...they are still in the quarentine area and can be brought back, but Adware saved them as text files now and they are unable to work when they are UN quarentined and put back ....so be carefull and know what you are deleting. But my computer does run unbelievably fast now that all those other 300 or so files were washed away.

[Lefty]

there's computer gal on the radio(Kim Kommando)and she says Gator is spyware in and of itself and she says not to use it.

[JustRalph]

Anything from Gator is spyware in my opine.

http://download.com.com/3000-2144-10194058.html?tag=lst-0-1

I use Spybot but have also used Ad aware and like both. I always delete the files. No problems so far. We just started a service department here at work and we had a lady bring a machine in the other day that had over 900 finds under spybot. She wanted to know why it was so slow? She also had 14 programs loading at startup.

Anything that wants to install from a web page......set your security settings up to medium or higher and make sure you are prompted for any installations via the web. Say no to all except those you are specifically aware of, or want.

[Dick Schmidt]

Note to both Ad-Aware and Spybot users:

Both programs move anything you tell it to delete to a quarantine file. You need to tell the program to totally delete the quarantine files to get everything off your hard disk.

I have never had either program delete anything of importance, though Spybot used to offer to do so. Ad-Aware seems to run very smoothly indeed and has never harmed anything on my computer. I run it every day, right before I defrag. I do hate spyware.

Dick

[DJofSD]

There are multiple aspects of how disk drives work and how the operating system stores data that will cause loss of performance and, in turn, benefit from the drive being defragmented.

In computer science parlance it's called garbage collecting. And what happens to the organization of the data on the drive is a good example of entropy.

Most consumer oriented drives use a grouping of data that is 512 characters (bytes) long called a sector. Obviously, most files are much larger than 512 bytes, so a file will occupy multiple sectors.

To make things more interesting, the way drives, the BIOS and OSes have evolved, sectors must be grouped together in units called clusters. Clusters are the basic unit for containing data from the user's viewpoint.

In a perfect world, all of the areas on a disk a file uses would be sequentially one right after the other. But because there are various delays when reading data and following the chain of where the next piece of a file is located, the scheme to store the data on the disk ends up putting the data on the drive so it is not sequentially one right after the other.

And, there is a finite number of sectors that are located on the same concentric ring (called a cylinder, since most drives will have a stack of surfaces like a layer cake). When you run out of sectors in a cylinder, you have move the read/write head. This is a mechanical operation - something physically moves.

As files are updated, deleted, new ones created using whatever free space the OS can find, things get pretty scattered. Of coarse, if a file is read only then it stays put.

It's the changing landscape of what sectors, clusters and cylinders a file uses that causes the disk to have to seek all over the place to find all of the pieces. It's the waiting for the read/write head to move and waiting for the drive to rotate underneath the heads that causes the delays. Minimize or eliminate these waits and the computer runs your program faster.

Unless you've optimized your Windows NTFS to defragment your MFT, even the overhead data areas the OS uses to keep track of things gets fragmented. See the fsutil program. BTW, even the MS defrag utility can not completely defrag the MFT since the first fragment of the MFT can not be moved.

Another source of delays on the drive is the swap file (under XP it's now called the page file). This system file can become fragmented. This can happen if you add more memory or tweak the page file size when in the control panel.

When the page file does become fragmented, it is the cause of additional waiting. The defrag utility does not correct this problem. Briefly, if you are adventuresome, there is a technique to delete then recreate the page file to correct the deframentation.

Another part of the defragmentation issue is more of an optimization consideration. And that is file placement. If you have a file that is referenced frequently and it is located far from the MFT and other frequently access files, you will be waiting unnecessarily while the disk seeks to the location of this highly referenced file. Move these files closer to the beginning of the drive to decrease the delay and increase the locality of reference.

Hope this helps.

DJofSD