I hear this all the time from people who think they are computer
savvy. I cannot come up with any reasons why this could be true.
(except maybe a situation where one has so many files on the HD that
it impacts the size of the swap file such that it impacts
performance).

I think this is one of those anecdotal "urban myth" type of beliefs by
people. Like the guy who tried to tell me that the reason his buddies'
computer speeded up after using a reg cleaner was that "now XP doesn't
have to scan through so many junk keys every time it accesses the
registry". His belief being that every time XP needs to access the
registry it scans through starting at the top.

Will deleting all the "junk" from one's HD make the computer run
faster? If so, how?

TIA,

grant

Grant Baxter wrote:
> I hear this all the time from people who think they are computer
> savvy. I cannot come up with any reasons why this could be true.
> (except maybe a situation where one has so many files on the HD that
> it impacts the size of the swap file such that it impacts
> performance).
>
> I think this is one of those anecdotal "urban myth" type of beliefs by
> people. Like the guy who tried to tell me that the reason his buddies'
> computer speeded up after using a reg cleaner was that "now XP doesn't
> have to scan through so many junk keys every time it accesses the
> registry". His belief being that every time XP needs to access the
> registry it scans through starting at the top.
>
> Will deleting all the "junk" from one's HD make the computer run
> faster? If so, how?
>
> TIA,
>
> grant
>

It is a myth, to a certain extent, especially when it comes to registry
cleaners. Having junk in temp folders can occasionally cause specific
problems, and it's a good idea to clean them out occasionally. XP's Disk
Cleanup function works nicely for this purpose. There have been a lot
of discussions here about the relative merits of registry cleaning, but
none of the people who tout it ever have any objective evidence that it
does anything other than separating gullible people from their money.
The registry in XP is best left alone unless there is a *specific*
problem that one has good reason to believe is being caused by something
in it.

Grant Baxter wrote:
> I hear this all the time from people who think they are computer
> savvy. I cannot come up with any reasons why this could be true.
> (except maybe a situation where one has so many files on the HD that
> it impacts the size of the swap file such that it impacts
> performance).
>
> I think this is one of those anecdotal "urban myth" type of beliefs by
> people. Like the guy who tried to tell me that the reason his buddies'
> computer speeded up after using a reg cleaner was that "now XP doesn't
> have to scan through so many junk keys every time it accesses the
> registry". His belief being that every time XP needs to access the
> registry it scans through starting at the top.
>
> Will deleting all the "junk" from one's HD make the computer run
> faster? If so, how?
>
> TIA,
>
> grant
>
I just inadvertently sent a response to your e-mail address, which I
shouldn't be able to do. Never post your real address in a newsgroup.
The spammers have harvesting bots that scan the groups for "live"
addresses, as you will probably soon find out the hard way.

In article <(E-Mail Removed)>,
(E-Mail Removed) says...
> Will deleting all the "junk" from one's HD make the computer run
> faster? If so, how?

File fragmentation is always a concern once the level of fragmentation
starts impacting performance. You see this on systems with marginal
space remaining for files.

In some instances you see a marked difference in performance as the
read-write heads don't have to MOVE to another sector across the disk,
they can just keep moving in a sequential manner. On fragmented disks,
any file that is fragmented requires the heads to move to another place,
which requires a read/write delay, before data movement can resume.

On a drive with 50% free space, fragmentation, in most cases, means
little and there should be enough space that the drive has very little
fragmentation, but, keep in mind that a drive will fill sequentially,
meaning that of you have a 100MB file, and the next space free is only
50MB, it will break the file into two (or more) parts - it does not look
for an open 100MB space.

In the early days I owned a 386/16 and a single drive, I had to sort a
30MB file and it was taking forever, I estimated 28 days to complete the
sort. Understanding the mechanics of the head having to read, then move
across the drive to an open space, write, then return and repeat, I
bought another hard drive for the system. When I ran the sort this time
I told the application to read from drive 1 and write output to drive 2,
it was done in 13 hours. This has little to do with fragmentation, but
it's a good example of how head movement can cause delays.

The same is true with the registry, the less you have to search the
faster a registry call will be.

--
--
(E-Mail Removed)
(Remove 999 to reply to me)

Performance can be enhanced by "Removing Junk" but not in the
traditional thinking. Most applications like to install what's called
Startups & Watchdog applets and services. When you remove
the application those components go as well. Things like Quicken
Billminder, QuickTime and others can really impact a PC's boot
time and quiescent memory footprint. Almost all OEM's install a
number of dubious use applications to make the user feel like he
or her are getting their money's worth. Then applications try to be
the default for their function, so they add monitoring tools. Just
take a new PC out of the box and run MsConfig and look at all
the things that run at bootup on the PC. I recently worked on a
new Dell desktop that had 31 startups on it.

"Leythos" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> In article <(E-Mail Removed)>,
> (E-Mail Removed) says...
>> Will deleting all the "junk" from one's HD make the computer run
>> faster? If so, how?
>
> File fragmentation is always a concern once the level of fragmentation
> starts impacting performance. You see this on systems with marginal
> space remaining for files.
>
> In some instances you see a marked difference in performance as the
> read-write heads don't have to MOVE to another sector across the disk,
> they can just keep moving in a sequential manner. On fragmented disks,
> any file that is fragmented requires the heads to move to another place,
> which requires a read/write delay, before data movement can resume.
>
> On a drive with 50% free space, fragmentation, in most cases, means
> little and there should be enough space that the drive has very little
> fragmentation, but, keep in mind that a drive will fill sequentially,
> meaning that of you have a 100MB file, and the next space free is only
> 50MB, it will break the file into two (or more) parts - it does not look
> for an open 100MB space.
>
> In the early days I owned a 386/16 and a single drive, I had to sort a
> 30MB file and it was taking forever, I estimated 28 days to complete the
> sort. Understanding the mechanics of the head having to read, then move
> across the drive to an open space, write, then return and repeat, I
> bought another hard drive for the system. When I ran the sort this time
> I told the application to read from drive 1 and write output to drive 2,
> it was done in 13 hours. This has little to do with fragmentation, but
> it's a good example of how head movement can cause delays.
>
> The same is true with the registry, the less you have to search the
> faster a registry call will be.
>
> --
> --
> (E-Mail Removed)
> (Remove 999 to reply to me)

Leythos wrote:
> In article <(E-Mail Removed)>,
> (E-Mail Removed) says...
>
>>Will deleting all the "junk" from one's HD make the computer run
>>faster? If so, how?
>
>
> File fragmentation is always a concern once the level of fragmentation
> starts impacting performance. You see this on systems with marginal
> space remaining for files.
>
> In some instances you see a marked difference in performance as the
> read-write heads don't have to MOVE to another sector across the disk,
> they can just keep moving in a sequential manner. On fragmented disks,
> any file that is fragmented requires the heads to move to another place,
> which requires a read/write delay, before data movement can resume.
>
> On a drive with 50% free space, fragmentation, in most cases, means
> little and there should be enough space that the drive has very little
> fragmentation, but, keep in mind that a drive will fill sequentially,
> meaning that of you have a 100MB file, and the next space free is only
> 50MB, it will break the file into two (or more) parts - it does not look
> for an open 100MB space.
>
> In the early days I owned a 386/16 and a single drive, I had to sort a
> 30MB file and it was taking forever, I estimated 28 days to complete the
> sort. Understanding the mechanics of the head having to read, then move
> across the drive to an open space, write, then return and repeat, I
> bought another hard drive for the system. When I ran the sort this time
> I told the application to read from drive 1 and write output to drive 2,
> it was done in 13 hours. This has little to do with fragmentation, but
> it's a good example of how head movement can cause delays.
>
> The same is true with the registry, the less you have to search the
> faster a registry call will be.
>

Your allusion to a dinosaur machine and hard drive is the source of the
current fallacious beliefs about compulsive defgragging. Modern drives
are much smaller physically and much, much faster, making the need for
defragging much less significant. Add NTFS to the mix and regular
defragging is unnecessary. In fact, the argument could be made that the
significant activity of defragging actually shortens the life of the
drive. Perhaps not by much, depending on how often one defrags, but in
most cases there's no real payback unless there's a specific performance
issue.

> Leythos wrote:
>> In article <(E-Mail Removed)>,
>> (E-Mail Removed) says...
>>
>>>Will deleting all the "junk" from one's HD make the computer run
>>>faster? If so, how?
>>
>>
>> File fragmentation is always a concern once the level of fragmentation
>> starts impacting performance. You see this on systems with marginal space
>> remaining for files.
>>
>> In some instances you see a marked difference in performance as the
>> read-write heads don't have to MOVE to another sector across the disk,
>> they can just keep moving in a sequential manner. On fragmented disks,
>> any file that is fragmented requires the heads to move to another place,
>> which requires a read/write delay, before data movement can resume.
>>
>> On a drive with 50% free space, fragmentation, in most cases, means
>> little and there should be enough space that the drive has very little
>> fragmentation, but, keep in mind that a drive will fill sequentially,
>> meaning that of you have a 100MB file, and the next space free is only
>> 50MB, it will break the file into two (or more) parts - it does not look
>> for an open 100MB space.
>>
>> In the early days I owned a 386/16 and a single drive, I had to sort a
>> 30MB file and it was taking forever, I estimated 28 days to complete the
>> sort. Understanding the mechanics of the head having to read, then move
>> across the drive to an open space, write, then return and repeat, I
>> bought another hard drive for the system. When I ran the sort this time I
>> told the application to read from drive 1 and write output to drive 2, it
>> was done in 13 hours. This has little to do with fragmentation, but it's
>> a good example of how head movement can cause delays.
>>
>> The same is true with the registry, the less you have to search the
>> faster a registry call will be.
>>
>

"Raymond J. Johnson Jr." <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> Your allusion to a dinosaur machine and hard drive is the source of the
> current fallacious beliefs about compulsive defgragging. Modern drives are
> much smaller physically and much, much faster, making the need for
> defragging much less significant. Add NTFS to the mix and regular
> defragging is unnecessary. In fact, the argument could be made that the
> significant activity of defragging actually shortens the life of the
> drive. Perhaps not by much, depending on how often one defrags, but in
> most cases there's no real payback unless there's a specific performance
> issue.

Raymond Johnson, as usual, brings a practical and sensible approach to this
issue as he has previously done with respect to the multi-partitioning craze
that seems to be so prevalent these days.

With respect to the supposed value of defragmenting hard disks in today's
personal computer environment, you may be interested in a report in the
February, 2004 issue of PC World magazine, in which they reported their
evaluation of defragmenters. Here's the pertinent excerpt from their
article...

"When the PC World Test Center set out to determine the effectiveness of the
defrag utilities in our set of suites, plus that of Diskeeper 8 from
Executive Software, our analysts found no evidence that defragmentation
enhanced performance. On a desktop system from the PC World office with a
heavily used, never-defragmented hard drive, the lab conducted speed tests
using a range of applications before and after defragmenting the drive with
each utility. In the end, the Test Center saw no significant performance
improvement after defragmenting with any program. This result flies in the
face of the perceived wisdom that fragmentation hinders performance, though
much older PCs (with slower and smaller hard drives) and heavily used
servers may benefit more from defragging."

I might add that about three years ago, some colleagues and myself performed
rather extensive tests of a number of third-party defragmenters as well as
the built-in defragmenters in Windows 98 and Windows Me, and to some extent,
in Windows 95. Our objective was to determine which one(s) were most
effective in defragmenting a hard disk in terms of enhancing speed
performance. To our surprise (at least for most of us!) we came to the
conclusion that *none* of the defragmenters resulted in any performance
enhancement. We measured some of the common tasks undertaken by the computer
user, e.g., bootup time, accessing programs, search & replace functions,
manipulating digital images, and the like. The conclusion we drew was
identical to that of PC World, i.e., there was no meaningful performance
enhancement resulting from the use of defragmenters. At the time we
concluded these tests Windows XP was just coming online so we didn't conduct
any extensive tests on that OS, but from some cursory tests we ran using
XP's built-in defragmenting utility, our previous conclusions concerning the
ineffectiveness of the defragmentation process remained unchanged.

Art

Art wrote:

>
> "When the PC World Test Center set out to determine the effectiveness of the
> defrag utilities in our set of suites, plus that of Diskeeper 8 from
> Executive Software, our analysts found no evidence that defragmentation
> enhanced performance.


I'll see PC World's single computer (where defragmenting the hard drive
didn't improve performance) and raise you the hundreds of machines I've
personally see improve in performance and stability after a defrag.

Defragmentation may not be as important today as it used to be, but is
still can make a noticable difference on a very great many systems - a
difference that one doesn't need benchmarking software to see.

--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:
http://dts-l.org/goodpost.htm
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having
both at once. - RAH

Bruce Chambers wrote:
> Art wrote:
>
>>
>> "When the PC World Test Center set out to determine the effectiveness
>> of the defrag utilities in our set of suites, plus that of Diskeeper 8
>> from
>> Executive Software, our analysts found no evidence that defragmentation
>> enhanced performance.
>
>
>
> I'll see PC World's single computer (where defragmenting the hard
> drive didn't improve performance) and raise you the hundreds of machines
> I've personally see improve in performance and stability after a defrag.
>
> Defragmentation may not be as important today as it used to be, but
> is still can make a noticable difference on a very great many systems -
> a difference that one doesn't need benchmarking software to see.
>

Bullsh*t. You poo-poo objective testing with subjective opinions. Show
me your data. And here's a hint: "I know it when I see it" ain't data.

In article <(E-Mail Removed)>, (E-Mail Removed) says...
> Your allusion to a dinosaur machine and hard drive is the source of the
> current fallacious beliefs about compulsive defgragging. Modern drives
> are much smaller physically and much, much faster, making the need for
> defragging much less significant. Add NTFS to the mix and regular
> defragging is unnecessary. In fact, the argument could be made that the
> significant activity of defragging actually shortens the life of the
> drive. Perhaps not by much, depending on how often one defrags, but in
> most cases there's no real payback unless there's a specific performance
> issue.

You, and I know you won't agree, have no idea about drive mechanics or
performance.

Any movement of a head, will shorten the mechanical life of the drive,
there is no one that will argue that.

And NTFS gets fragmented as much as any other Windows format - I should
know, I have hundreds of servers and workstations that I see it on
daily.

Where you messed up is looking at large drives, most of them are not
near full, so fragmentation is minimal in most cases. When a drive nears
full it will start fragmenting badly and will benefit from a full
defrag.

In most cases there is a real payback on a severely fragmented drive,
and if you take the time to test it you will find it to be true. Heavily
used drives, where users add/delete items, will benefit from defragging.


--
--
(E-Mail Removed)
(Remove 999 to reply to me)