defragging - good or bad?

[Tim.T]

I've always wondered how necessary defragging really is. I suppose it's a
matter of trust. The defrag companies like Diskeeper of course tell us that
it's necessary, to extend the natural life of the drive. I infact use
Diskeeper 8, and it seems to do the job fine. But I've just found a bad
sector on my drive and I cannot shake the feeling that this constant, almost
anal obsession with defragging I have has contributed to it. I've lost
drives I looked after like crazy, I think mainly to overheating or just
general wear and tear. But I never got the feeling defragging miraculaously
extended their health any. Maybe because there are so many other things that
can go wrong.

The need for anti-virus, anti-spyware programs is demonstrably real and
proveable. Has the need for defragging drives really been proved?

Tim

 

[Mark Hall]

all defragging your hard drive does is move all the clusters for each file
so that they are next to each other. this make the read time for a file
quicker as the disk does not have to spin as many times and the head on the
drive doesn't have to move as much. it doesn't necessarily extend the life
of a hard drive it just make it a little quicker.

I've always wondered how necessary defragging really is. I suppose it's a
matter of trust. The defrag companies like Diskeeper of course tell us that
it's necessary, to extend the natural life of the drive. I infact use
Diskeeper 8, and it seems to do the job fine. But I've just found a bad
sector on my drive and I cannot shake the feeling that this constant, almost
anal obsession with defragging I have has contributed to it. I've lost
drives I looked after like crazy, I think mainly to overheating or just
general wear and tear. But I never got the feeling defragging miraculaously
extended their health any. Maybe because there are so many other things that
can go wrong.

The need for anti-virus, anti-spyware programs is demonstrably real and
proveable. Has the need for defragging drives really been proved?

Tim

 

[JS]

Unlikely that defragging the drive caused the bad sector or degraded the
drive's long term health.
My AV software updates daily and after a few weeks the drive map looks like
a piece of Swiss Cheese so I do defrag about once a month. As to any
performance benefits, maybe about 10%, which is not likely to be noticeable.

JS

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I've always wondered how necessary defragging really is. I suppose
it's a matter of trust. The defrag companies like Diskeeper of course
tell us that it's necessary, to extend the natural life of the drive.

No, defragging doesn't extend the life of the drive. Its purpose is to speed
up access to the drive.

I infact use Diskeeper 8, and it seems to do the job fine. But I've
just found a bad sector on my drive and I cannot shake the feeling
that this constant, almost anal obsession with defragging I have has
contributed to it.

That's *highly* unlikely.

I've lost drives I looked after like crazy, I
think mainly to overheating or just general wear and tear. But I
never got the feeling defragging miraculaously extended their health
any. Maybe because there are so many other things that can go wrong.

The need for anti-virus, anti-spyware programs is demonstrably real
and proveable. Has the need for defragging drives really been proved?

My standard advice on how often to defrag is to pick some arbitary frequency
(for example, once a month) and defrag on that schedule a few times. Assess
whether the computer generally feels faster after doing so. If the answer is
yes, defrag more frequently. If the answer is no, defrag less frequently.
Repeat a few times, and you'll soon settle into a frequency that works well
for you. If you find that defragging doesn't provide any speedup, you can
stop defragging at all.

 

[Leythos]

I've always wondered how necessary defragging really is. I suppose it's a
matter of trust. The defrag companies like Diskeeper of course tell us that
it's necessary, to extend the natural life of the drive. I infact use
Diskeeper 8, and it seems to do the job fine. But I've just found a bad
sector on my drive and I cannot shake the feeling that this constant, almost
anal obsession with defragging I have has contributed to it. I've lost
drives I looked after like crazy, I think mainly to overheating or just
general wear and tear. But I never got the feeling defragging miraculaously
extended their health any. Maybe because there are so many other things that
can go wrong.

Defragging a drive in and of itself does not cause any damage to the
drive or the data. What causes damage is normal use, the more you use
the drive the more you have a chance for a failure.

Now, if you understand, defragging a drive requires the R/W head to move
over the surface of the platter(s) more than your normal use would,
which increases the amount of Use of the drive.

The actual defrag has nothing to do with wear, it's just that defragging
adds to the normal wear of a drive.

I defrag monthly only, some limited use systems I defrag ever 6 months,
some very heavy use servers I defrag every weekend.