defragment how often?

[Marcy]

Is it fine to defragment the C drive once a week? everyother day? I was
suggested, by another poster MVP, to try diskeeper lite-and that program
does basically what the one that comes with XP does. but this one tells you
that you should defrag. daily/more often. when I analyze using vp's version,
it almost always says, that "no defrag is needed at this time"
I still went ahead and used the diskeeper lite as that program suggested for
both my XP and ME versions- Is there any harm in defraging often? TIA

 

[Jim]

Is it fine to defragment the C drive once a week? everyother day? I was
suggested, by another poster MVP, to try diskeeper lite-and that program
does basically what the one that comes with XP does. but this one tells
you that you should defrag. daily/more often. when I analyze using vp's
version, it almost always says, that "no defrag is needed at this time"
I still went ahead and used the diskeeper lite as that program suggested
for both my XP and ME versions- Is there any harm in defraging often? TIA

There is no certain time. It all depends on your workload and the size of
the files.

I only defrag when defrag says to. If I had any other program, I would
follow the same logic. And, I should mention that every now and the defrag
tells me to hop to it.

Jim

 

[Gordon]

Is it fine to defragment the C drive once a week? everyother day? I was
suggested, by another poster MVP, to try diskeeper lite-and that program
does basically what the one that comes with XP does. but this one tells
you that you should defrag. daily/more often. when I analyze using vp's
version, it almost always says, that "no defrag is needed at this time"
I still went ahead and used the diskeeper lite as that program suggested
for both my XP and ME versions- Is there any harm in defraging often? TIA

It does no /harm/ doing it that often, but even with heavy use, as the XP
file manager is so much more superior to the other versions of windows,
there's really no point unless the system is starting to get sluggish, and
even that may be something else.....

 

[Phil Weldon]

'Marcy' wrote:
| Is it fine to defragment the C drive once a week? everyother day? I was
| suggested, by another poster MVP, to try diskeeper lite-and that program
| does basically what the one that comes with XP does. but this one tells
you
| that you should defrag. daily/more often. when I analyze using vp's
version,
| it almost always says, that "no defrag is needed at this time"
| I still went ahead and used the diskeeper lite as that program suggested
for
| both my XP and ME versions- Is there any harm in defraging often?
_____

Follow the advice that the Windows XP 'Analyze' feature gives. If your
drives are formatted as NTSF defragmentation is not needed very often (less
that 10% is generally OK.)

Like any other use of your hard drives, defragmentation adds a little wear
and tear. Defragmentation works the disk mechanism intensively and requires
the computer system to be powered up for extra time. Weekly defragmentation
should be more than enough for most systems.

Phil Weldon

| Is it fine to defragment the C drive once a week? everyother day? I was
| suggested, by another poster MVP, to try diskeeper lite-and that program
| does basically what the one that comes with XP does. but this one tells
you
| that you should defrag. daily/more often. when I analyze using vp's
version,
| it almost always says, that "no defrag is needed at this time"
| I still went ahead and used the diskeeper lite as that program suggested
for
| both my XP and ME versions- Is there any harm in defraging often? TIA
|
| --
| Thanks so very much for your help-! ! ! !
|
|

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Is it fine to defragment the C drive once a week? everyother day? I

There's no answer that's right for everyone. It depends on how you use your
computer and it depends on how much you use your computer. However once a
day is almost certainly enormous overkill, and even once a wek is probably
way more often than makes sense for almost everyone.

You should defragment your drive when doing so results in a speed up. Here's
what I recommend. Pick some arbitrary interval--for example once a month.
Defragment on that interval a few times, and 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.

was suggested, by another poster MVP, to try diskeeper lite-and that
program does basically what the one that comes with XP does. but this
one tells you that you should defrag. daily/more often. when I
analyze using vp's version, it almost always says, that "no defrag is
needed at this time" I still went ahead and used the diskeeper lite as
that program
suggested for both my XP and ME versions- Is there any harm in
defraging often? TIA

No, just a waste of time.