Am I supposed to manually defrag drives?

[Cat]

I've read articles about the built-in defragmenter of Windows Vista.
It said it didn't show detailed information because it didn't need
much user intervention. So I believed that all the work would be done
behind the scene automatically.

Few hours ago, I downloaded and installed the trial version of
PerfectDisk, and analyzed the C drive which I formatted about two
weeks ago when I installed Windows Vista on it. PerfectDisk showed
that it was severely fragmented. It looked like the built-in
defragmenter hadn't worked well as I expected. Anyways, after two
system freezes while defragmenting with PerfectDisk, I uninstalled it.

Now, should I manually defragment drives using the built-in
defragmenter? If so, how often? Or what am I supposed to do? Should I
keep my PC idle long enough so that the built-in defragmenter work
automatically?

But first of all, does fragmentation really slows down the system
seriously? In my experience, even though some defragmenters show how
much the system speed has been boosted after defragmentation, I
couldn't actually feel any significant performance boost.

 

[Rick Rogers]

Hi,

Your last paragraph says it all. Defragging's effect on performance is
overrated. The effects for the average user are nominal at best. Casual
users will have no need to defrag for months, if ever.

When Vista installed, it used a lot of disk space for temporary files. These
were removed at the end of setup, but it leaves a lot of gaps. This is why
you see what appears to be a severely fragmented drive. Allowing the
background defragger to work during non-use periods will eventually make the
files more contiguous, but again the effect on performance will likely be
negligible to you the user. A third party product can do this faster, and
probably better, but to what end? I mean, if you want to pay someone your
hard-earned cash to make a pretty picture of your neatly placed files, go
for it, but it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

 

[Scott]

Hi,

Your last paragraph says it all. Defragging's effect on performance is
overrated. The effects for the average user are nominal at best. Casual
users will have no need to defrag for months, if ever.

When Vista installed, it used a lot of disk space for temporary files. These
were removed at the end of setup, but it leaves a lot of gaps. This is why
you see what appears to be a severely fragmented drive. Allowing the
background defragger to work during non-use periods will eventually make the
files more contiguous, but again the effect on performance will likely be
negligible to you the user. A third party product can do this faster, and
probably better, but to what end? I mean, if you want to pay someone your
hard-earned cash to make a pretty picture of your neatly placed files, go
for it, but it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

OK, I have to ask, have you ever used a third-party defragging
program?

Curiously,
--
Scott http://angrykeyboarder.com

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
NOTICE: In-Newsgroup (and therefore off-topic) comments on my sig will
be cheerfully ignored, so don't waste our time.

 

[Rick Rogers]

I have used and tested the results of the last three iterations of Perfect
Disk.

For the hard core gamers and heavy user there may be some benefit, but I've
seen no performance enhancement for the casual websurfer.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

 

[Pipboy]

OK, I have to ask, have you ever used a third-party defragging
program?

Curiously,

I have Diskeeper, PerfectDisk, Norton Speeddisk, and have also used O&O
Defrag. IMO, he is correct and they don't seem to offer any performance
benefit over the one built into Windows, even though they claim otherwise.
But I don't want the one in Vista running all the time in the background
either so how do I turn it off? I will probably install PerfectDisk because
it is more convenient to use and actually shows me what is going on - once
I upgrade to the latest version anyway.

 

[Scott]

I have used and tested the results of the last three iterations of Perfect
Disk.

For the hard core gamers and heavy user there may be some benefit, but I've
seen no performance enhancement for the casual websurfer.

I can't argue with that. But I guess I missed the part where we were
distinguishing between heavy and casual users.

That was the point I was trying to make before when I got "beat up"
over it

I thought I was making a distinction between both but I guess it got
lost somewhere....

--
Scott http://angrykeyboarder.com

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
NOTICE: In-Newsgroup (and therefore off-topic) comments on my sig will
be cheerfully ignored, so don't waste our time.

 

[Pipboy]

On > I can't argue with that. But I guess I missed the part where we were
distinguishing between heavy and casual users.

I'm a heavy gamer and still see no benenfit using 3rd party defrag. I read
an article where they tested 3rd party defraggers and they couldn't measure
any benefit either.

 

[Rick Rogers]

Hi Scott,

Wasn't beating on you at all, I was simply responding to your question and
conceding the possibility of benefit to certain classes of users. Note that
in my initial response, the third line was "The effects for the average user
are nominal at best", and that was to specifically avoid an arguement on the
merits of defragging by the heavy user/gamers. The vast majority of home
users do not fall into that category, and my response was geared to that
segment of users.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

 

[Scott]

Hi Scott,

Wasn't beating on you at all,

That's correct. I was referring to Mr. Urban's comments. Sorry for any
confusion there.
--
Scott http://angrykeyboarder.com

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
NOTICE: In-Newsgroup (and therefore off-topic) comments on my sig will
be cheerfully ignored, so don't waste our time.

 

[Rick Rogers]

NP.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org