blackpearl
The Devil
Most people regularly defragment their hard disk, but I don't. People say that it increases performance and life of the hard disk. But in my opinion it does more harm than good.
Consider what benefit you get by defragmenting - just a few milliseconds gain in access time. But in order to make your hard disk's access time a fraction of a second lower you make your hard disk undergo massive disk thrashing for hours!! Some people state that defragmenting lowers disk thrashing by making the file available at one place instead of many places. True, but thats only minor thrashing, for just a couple of seconds or even less than a second, depending upon the size of the file. But to save the hard disk from a few seconds of daily thrashing you make your hard disk go through hours of thrashing - read-move-write;read-move-write .... non stop for hours. Isn't that going to do more harm to your hard disk? Isn't this exessive work out lower the life of your hard disk? Considering what you get in return, a barely noticeable difference in access time, do you think its wise to defragment your hard disk? Maybe 3 times a year would be OK, but certainly not monthly.
I did some search and found some articles that says that defragmenting does not help to improve performance. The only use, if any, of defragmenting is that it helps recover data in the event of a disk crash. None of them said about the disk thrashing part though, thats completely my idea.
So what is your opinion?
Consider what benefit you get by defragmenting - just a few milliseconds gain in access time. But in order to make your hard disk's access time a fraction of a second lower you make your hard disk undergo massive disk thrashing for hours!! Some people state that defragmenting lowers disk thrashing by making the file available at one place instead of many places. True, but thats only minor thrashing, for just a couple of seconds or even less than a second, depending upon the size of the file. But to save the hard disk from a few seconds of daily thrashing you make your hard disk go through hours of thrashing - read-move-write;read-move-write .... non stop for hours. Isn't that going to do more harm to your hard disk? Isn't this exessive work out lower the life of your hard disk? Considering what you get in return, a barely noticeable difference in access time, do you think its wise to defragment your hard disk? Maybe 3 times a year would be OK, but certainly not monthly.
I did some search and found some articles that says that defragmenting does not help to improve performance. The only use, if any, of defragmenting is that it helps recover data in the event of a disk crash. None of them said about the disk thrashing part though, thats completely my idea.
*www.techbuilder.org/recipes/59201471 said:While it was true that defragmenting helped older PCs, it no longer applies. Today we have 7200-RPM (rotations per minute) hard-disk drives with improved seek and latency times; many also contain an 8-MB cache buffer. Let's not forget Windows XP's ultra-efficient NTFS (NT File System). For PCs, servers, and workstations equipped with these innovations, defragmenting no longer makes much improvement, if any, to system performance.
*www.pcworld.com/article/id said:The PC World Test Center's tests reveal that defraggers don't actually improve performance. And Steve Gibson, president of PC consulting firm Gibson Research Corporation, confirmed our findings.
Nevertheless, regular defragging is still a good idea to aid disaster recovery. The more fragmented the files on your drive are, the more likely a disk error is to destroy them.
So what is your opinion?