Topic: Defragmentation, how often?

[firefox]

how often should a computer be defragmented?

[Samker]

how often should a computer be defragmented?

If you are on-line frequently you should regularly clean your PC with antivirus and with spyware/malware detection and removal tools. You should also use 'disk cleanup' at least monthly, to remove the debris and unnecessary files which accumulate on your PC.

If, after all that, you notice your PC is starting to slow down a bit, then you should defragment. There's no point in defragmenting unless you are suffering performance loss from file fragmentation. Defragmentation finds all the bits and pieces of your files and moves them all so that each file is together in the one spot. That speeds up file access, of course, because the heads of the hard drive don't need to jump about all over the place to read each file.

My suggestion would be to defragment only when you need to (3-6 months). On-line activity will cause a reasonable amount of ‘temporary’ files to be written to the hard drive, and may shorten the period between defrags for you, but there’s no fixed formula you need to follow.

[Clarice]

Hello, I've been defragmenting my computer weekly along with the disk clean up. Is it dangerous to do this? If so why would it be?

[palmer]

how often should a computer be defragmented?

How often to defrag would depend on how fragmented your drive gets and how fast. The analyze feature in a defrag program should give an idea. Some people delete/edit and add files so frequently that they defrag daily or once every few days. Others defrag once a month or couple of months. It would depend on each user.

Hello, I've been defragmenting my computer weekly along with the disk clean up. Is it dangerous to do this? If so why would it be?

Not really since even if you do run a defrag on a drive that has hardly any fragmentation, it doesnt have much work to do anyways and completes in a few minutes.

In fact defraggers like Diskeeper run in real time on automatic mode and defrag whenever required without affecting other programs and system resources. They keep the drives defragged very safely.

[midias]

I spend a lot of time changing files and browsing the net.  Windows says I should defragment about oonce ever 2 months on my storage drives.

[F3RL]

I run defragmentation every weekends regardless of my computer usage, but CCleaner cleans my internet history and other junks each time I startup my computer.

midias, I think it would be better off to run defrag once a week? (in interval?).

[CMTech]

I defrag when my computer loses it's steady pace im used to.

[firefox]

what is better in vista- defrag in normal mode or safe mode?

[Samker]

what is better in vista- defrag in normal mode or safe mode?

In my opinion Safe Mode is much better, because it provide better defragmentation results and more important it's Faster than Normal...

Few info. related to this question:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/942092

http://blogs.technet.com/filecab/archive/2007/01/26/don-t-judge-a-book-by-its-cover-why-windows-vista-defrag-is-cool.aspx

[stevebri]

It depends on how you use your computer.  If you open and write to alot of files (word processing, spreadsheets, local databases) then you may want to defrag once a week.  I used to defrag my drive at work every night as I always had alot of different things going on.  If you just use a web browser and email and don't download anything, then a few times a month is probably fine.  If this is a home desktop you could leave it on while the defrag runs.  This can take a few minutes to several hours depending on how much work needs to be done.  If this is a laptop don't leave it on overnight as (especially with Toshiba laptops) it can overheat and shutdown.