Does Vista (Home Premium, in my case) defrag the hard drive(s) on its
own, without being scheduled to do so? I know I can manually force a
defrag, but what about unscheduled defrags? Thanks.

EW

Hi,

Actually, by default it's scheduled to go once a week and you need do no
more. It will occur as a low priority background process automatically. You
will find this set in the Task Scheduler. As long as you don't remove the
task or disable the scheduler, it will happen automatically. If you do
disable either the task or the scheduler, then you will need to manually
start it when you suspect the drive is fragmented.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/
Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

"EW" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:5b3fcbe0-54cf-4d3c-8ca5-(E-Mail Removed)...
> Does Vista (Home Premium, in my case) defrag the hard drive(s) on its
> own, without being scheduled to do so? I know I can manually force a
> defrag, but what about unscheduled defrags? Thanks.
>
> EW

Hi "EW":
Once you get SP1 installed, when you open the Vista Defrag program you
will have additional options for defragging your PC. Currently starting the
defrag program Vista will defrag all hard drives/volumes it thinks needs it.
With SP1 there is a button to select which drives/volumes you want to defrag
and start it immediately or set up automatic defragging for just the
drives/volumes you want to defrag.

xiowan.........in tucson

"EW" wrote:

> Does Vista (Home Premium, in my case) defrag the hard drive(s) on its
> own, without being scheduled to do so? I know I can manually force a
> defrag, but what about unscheduled defrags? Thanks.
>
> EW
>

If you open up "Task Scheduler" you should see in the Active Tasks section
an entry of "ScheduledDefrag". This scheduled task was automatically created
by the system.

"EW" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:5b3fcbe0-54cf-4d3c-8ca5-(E-Mail Removed)...
> Does Vista (Home Premium, in my case) defrag the hard drive(s) on its
> own, without being scheduled to do so? I know I can manually force a
> defrag, but what about unscheduled defrags? Thanks.
>
> EW

Thanks to you all for the replies. Now I know.
Best regards.

EW

I have a question about that. I recently downloaded the Auslogic Disk
Defragmentation tool and it found approximately 1,200 files fragmented. I
am sure that is not a lot considering the computer is a year old and all I
have used is the Windows disk defragmenter. However, about it running in
the background...does this only occur when your computer is idle or is this
when you are performing operations? I question this because I use a laptop
and I never leave it running, when it is on I am using it and when I'm not
using it, it is hibernating.

Thanks for your response!

--
Check out the great stores listed here! Receive special offers! Visit
http://driven.mysite.com
"Rick Rogers" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> Hi,
>
> Actually, by default it's scheduled to go once a week and you need do no
> more. It will occur as a low priority background process automatically.
> You will find this set in the Task Scheduler. As long as you don't remove
> the task or disable the scheduler, it will happen automatically. If you do
> disable either the task or the scheduler, then you will need to manually
> start it when you suspect the drive is fragmented.
>
> --
> Best of Luck,
>
> Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP
> http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/
> Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
> My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com
>
> "EW" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
> news:5b3fcbe0-54cf-4d3c-8ca5-(E-Mail Removed)...
>> Does Vista (Home Premium, in my case) defrag the hard drive(s) on its
>> own, without being scheduled to do so? I know I can manually force a
>> defrag, but what about unscheduled defrags? Thanks.
>>
>> EW
>

As long as the unit is plugged in, the defrag is no issue. If, however, you
go mobile with it, using the battery, I would suggest disabling the
auto-defrag, as it will consume power unecessarily by running the defrag in
the background even when you're running on the battery.

"EW" wrote:

> Thanks to you all for the replies. Now I know.
> Best regards.
>
> EW
>

If you are really concerned about defrag running down the battery, then I
would suggest that occasionally or somewhat frequently you explicitly run
defrag while the laptop is on external power, during a time when you are not
using the laptop. Then there won't be much work that defrag has to do and it
won't run for long if it starts to run while on battery power alone. Then
you can leave defrags scheduled task (auto-defrag) alone.

"Westeban" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:76E96A27-2DF1-43E3-BB26-(E-Mail Removed)...
> As long as the unit is plugged in, the defrag is no issue. If, however,
> you
> go mobile with it, using the battery, I would suggest disabling the
> auto-defrag, as it will consume power unecessarily by running the defrag
> in
> the background even when you're running on the battery.
>
> "EW" wrote:
>
>> Thanks to you all for the replies. Now I know.
>> Best regards.
>>
>> EW
>>

Hi,

The default defrag process will run as a low priority process. Obviously it
will run when idle, but whether or not it runs while in use depends on the
degree of use. Heavy demands would preclude it, but light ones would not. As
to how Auslogic will run, I can't answer as I don't use it. I have tried
some others, perfectdisk among them, and the results are similar to the
standard process. I personally think that defragging is overrated, and
casual users will not see much benefit from it. Heavy gamers, video editors,
autocad users maybe, but casual users do not put that much demand on their
system and will likely notice little if any difference in response times
even on a moderately fragmented system.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/
Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

"tempting2taanzaa" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:%(E-Mail Removed)...
>I have a question about that. I recently downloaded the Auslogic Disk
>Defragmentation tool and it found approximately 1,200 files fragmented. I
>am sure that is not a lot considering the computer is a year old and all I
>have used is the Windows disk defragmenter. However, about it running in
>the background...does this only occur when your computer is idle or is this
>when you are performing operations? I question this because I use a laptop
>and I never leave it running, when it is on I am using it and when I'm not
>using it, it is hibernating.
>
> Thanks for your response!
>
> --
> Check out the great stores listed here! Receive special offers! Visit
> http://driven.mysite.com
> "Rick Rogers" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
> news:(E-Mail Removed)...
>> Hi,
>>
>> Actually, by default it's scheduled to go once a week and you need do no
>> more. It will occur as a low priority background process automatically.
>> You will find this set in the Task Scheduler. As long as you don't remove
>> the task or disable the scheduler, it will happen automatically. If you
>> do disable either the task or the scheduler, then you will need to
>> manually start it when you suspect the drive is fragmented.
>>
>> --
>> Best of Luck,
>>
>> Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP
>> http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/
>> Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
>> My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com
>>
>> "EW" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
>> news:5b3fcbe0-54cf-4d3c-8ca5-(E-Mail Removed)...
>>> Does Vista (Home Premium, in my case) defrag the hard drive(s) on its
>>> own, without being scheduled to do so? I know I can manually force a
>>> defrag, but what about unscheduled defrags? Thanks.
>>>
>>> EW
>>
>

"Gordon" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>And in answer to your question - Vista defrag runs automatically when the
>machine is idle. There's no need to schedule it at all.
>
>See here:
>http://support.microsoft.com/kb/942092

And that "runs automatically" is at 1am every Wednesday.

It is conceivable that someone might want to use the scheduler to run
it at a different time, or more frequently.