Speed Up Your Computers In 4 Steps

[mediator]

^^^ HEy dont deviate the subject! We are talking about "Defragment and its physical Impact on hardisk" and not talking about "Defragment and its advantages"! We are talking about physical thing and not something caused due to paging activity!
So what do u think about Digit and its Advice??

 

[s18000rpm]

as i've mentioned earlier IT ALL DEPENDS ON, the way ONE USES his/her PC.

If you're doing lots of IMAGE/MOVIE editing, then you'll need defragging every now & then.

UNTILL UNLESS YOU REALLY NEED TO DEFRAG, THEN ONLY YOU SHOULD DO IT.

 

[mediator]

^^My PC is used extensively and defraged twice a week! MAh aunts PC is also defraged twice a week though used rarely. Whats the difference? Both PCs are working fine!
I dunno why is it so hard for u to comment on DIGIT's Advice!

 

[s18000rpm]

well its not that i cant comment on Digit's advice, i'm just looking through some old Digit mag. issues & Fast Track, coz i think i read about this "too much defragging = long term performance loss of HDD" in one of these... or maybe in "Chip Magazine".
Well , when i get that info, i'll inform you.

Dont you think that the HEAT (more than 55-60 degree celcius) produced during the process of Defragmentation can have damaging effect to the HDD.

If you're having a 20/40 GB partition, with 80% used space, the Defragmentation will take a minimum of 15-20 mins. to do its process, so do you advice to use the HDD at those temperatures for long period of times?

i also use my PC (15-18hrs a day), but still i havent seen any Downgrade in Performance of PC, the files which get Fragmented are the "Restore Points" & the "Registry" (for registry defrag. i use TuneUp 2006). I just Proceed with Defragmentation only when the Default MS defragger advices so.
So i do the Defragging mostly on Race Days (F1) & weekends. (thats once in A month or TWO

 

[Anindya]

Why are u people fighting over a simple matter? Some asked for advice and someone responded accordingly. If dont like the advice do not follow it and let everyone know the reason for it .Thats all. We are after all here to exchange ideas among ourselves.

 

[mediator]

@Anandiya, this is a tutorial section!! If u wanna give an advice, u must be sure of it completely and u shud have proof for it so that all others can keep that advice in mind! If ur not so sure of it other section are more appropriate then this one! Defragment corrupting hardisk sound quite absurd to me. If I got some doubt, then I shud question, dont u think so??

Neways @s18000rpm, Please continue searching for that magazine and when done please do inform me about that! I'll be glad if u can find that in any digit magazine coz thats the only magazine I issue!

Dont you think that the HEAT (more than 55-60 degree celcius) produced during the process of Defragmentation can have damaging effect to the HDD.

If u think like that, then what do u think about High end gaming?? Not only hardisk but the Graphic card too produces immense amount of heat that directly affects the hardisk,RAM,the entire cabinet and its ventilation too! Dude PCs are meant to withstand such temperatures! 55-60 degrees is the normal temperature inside my cabinet during summers, not to mention what happens during gaming! But still mah PC works fine. So I disagree what u said!

If you're having a 20/40 GB partition, with 80% used space, the Defragmentation will take a minimum of 15-20 mins. to do its process, so do you advice to use the HDD at those temperatures for long period of times?

Even if 80% is used on a 100 GB partition I'll leave my PC getting defraged the whole night. Whats the difference?? My game partition is 50 GB and ony 10 GB unused! Like such I have 5 more partitions ranging between 20-30 GB one for muxic one for videos etc. I defrag all of them alternately every week! For temperature I told u above. So yea, I'll advice to defragment it like u asked! Not just me, Digit also says the same like I quoted before!

also use my PC (15-18hrs a day), but still i havent seen any Downgrade in Performance of PC, the files which get Fragmented are the "Restore Points" & the "Registry" (for registry defrag. i use TuneUp 2006). I just Proceed with Defragmentation only when the Default MS defragger advices so.
So i do the Defragging mostly on Race Days (F1) & weekends. (thats once in A month or TWO

It acually depends on PC usage that how much it gets fragmented! The difference in performance is not usually seen in months also if system is not used extensively. Once a weekend is a good practice if u dont have enough time! If once a month is Ok on ur PC then thats fine. I'm not having any complaints for that! But just like scanning ur PC once a week for viruses and various infections is a recommended practise, similarly defragment once a week is a good practice!

The only thing I dont agree is that defragment having any consequences on hdd physically! Tell me if fragmenting doesnt have such consequences then how can defragmenting will???? And Gaming results in quicker fragmentation with temperatures soaring uncomparably with whole cabinet almost having burning like situation inside. But still PC works fine 24/7!

 

[Rollercoaster]

i agree with s18000rpms
definately defraging every three days is no good... unless ur usual work is creating and deleting lots of files, then too fragmentation occurs when the disk is getting full, otherwise the OS manages to find enough free space in one go.

there is definately not any noticable drop in performance due to defregmemtation unless in extreme cases. some files perform good when defragmented. for eg ur page file. that is because even to access the page file the OS needs to do a seek operation and if the pagefiles is located all over the disk in sufficient size then it just needs to seek to the nearest block.

For defining impact on HDD life u r not using the right anology and definately defragmentation reduces life of the HDD according the the industry standard anology, MTBF, Mean Time Before Failure. when u think of the life in number of hours(which is true for all machines). like for eg a bulb has a life of 100,000 hrs so if u light it up daily for 10 hrs.. it is probable that it would burn our earlier then if u light it up one hour daily. Hell!! using this anology you can say that by keeping ur heart beating u r reducing its life But it is true for all devices, if their use can be turned on/off

as for the effect of heat on HDD read this-
"According to our research, increasing HDD temperature by 5°C has the same effect on reliability as switching from 10% to 100% HDD workload! Each one-degree drop of HDD temperature is equivalent to a 10% increase of HDD service life."

source - *www.digit-life.com/articles2/storage/hddpower.html (long and elaborate)
*www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/article/1540.3/ (short and sweet)

Game players definately should defregment once after a three or four game (un)installs.

 

[mediator]

^^ Dude I already know such thing! But if u really think hdd cycles are wasted in defragmenting, then what do think about when hardisk and PC is being used for scanning,gaming,updating,spending countless hours on watching adult sites,chatting etc?? If u can waste 1000 cycles in such entertainment things, then can't u waste just 1 cycle on maintainence??
When did I even say defragmenting in 3 days is good? I only said its a recommended practise. But I dont believe its bad for PC either! Its not good only for us as such frequency of maintainence will just waste our time! And yes I agree defragmenting frequency shud match the PC usage frequency!
But u shud know that after a week when u defrag first time it may take like 30 minutes, if u do that again after one day it may take 5 minutes or less! Next day it may take 2 minutes. So dont think if defragged frequently will waste the PC usage time.

As for cycles again, Servers are online 24/7 doing various kinds of processing and under heavy utilizations but still work for more than 5 yrs or so! A lotta other examples like gaming etc I can give too and had given some! So please dont say defragmenting corrupts hdd even if done once in 3 days!

Read mah previous posts about what Digit says! A top magazine is itself saying that defragment once a fortnight is a good practise!

 

[ketanbodas]

Nice thread. But Degraging once a month is more than enuf, I red somewhere.

 

[mediator]

^^ right! Neways who has the time to defrag all the time??