De-Fragging is not required?

[allison17]

Hi everyone,
I would like your opinion as to the following e-mail sent to all computer
users at my place of employment
Thank you for responding:

THE E-MAIL;

"In recent day's I have been asked numerous times how to defrag and scandisk
PC's with Windows XP and not having administrative rights. Well I have
wonderful new for those of you with this operating system, you don't have
to. Below you can read and exert from Microsoft regarding defragging and
Windows XP machines.

Defrag Regularly

DOS and non-NT versions of Windows do very little to keep their file systems
optimized. Huge gaps of free space open up in various areas of the hard
drive as programs and files are installed and removed; later, other files
are written starting at the first block of free space, filling the gaps in
order by sector and ending up scattered in pieces all over the drive. When
an operating system has to access several different areas of a hard disk
just to load a single file or program, performance is severely degraded.

NT kernel operating systems, like Windows XP, take measures when used with
the NTFS file system to keep hard disks contiguous--but fragmentation still
does occur. Therefore, you should defrag your XP hard disk(s) on a regular
basis depending on how much file juggling you do on your PC.

If you install and remove programs frequently, you should defrag the drive
as often as once per week. If, however, you tend to use the same
applications for long periods of time and you don't move files around, you
can get away with defragging your drives.

Since we don't install and uninstalled software of these machine on a
regular basis and we tend to use the same software on a daily basis, we fall
into the portion that can get away with defragging our systems. I hope this
gives you' all a little more insight on your computers, if you should have
any question please feel free to contact me.

Thank you,"


So, what do you think?

Clem

 

[Bruce]

OK.
Not sure if they want you to perform these operations or not, but ScanDisk
goes by a different name now. It is CH?DSK, Can't remember, but that doesn't
matter. To do this operation: My Computer>Right click C
Drive>Properties>Tools>Error Checking, {Same program as old ScanDick}, Check
both boxes and proceed. Defrag is located there also. FYI: Defrag and Disk
Clean Up are in Programs>Accessories>System Tools, but not Error Checking.
Shortcuts can be made for the first two, but not Error Checking, {Old
ScanDisk}. Weather or not they want you to do these operations, I can't see
how you could possibly do any harm in doing so, except for the time it takes
to so.

 

[Bruce]

Just remembered. It is CHKDSK. You can: Start>Run>Type CHKDSK, and it will
start . But it is not as a complete of a check compared to doing it the way
I explained first. Try both. You'll see.

 

[bronco7]

Clem: Or is it Mr. CLEM CADIDDLEHOPPER? You are an idiot
to think anyone would fall for thiss junk.

 

[Rob Schneider]

I personally don't think that NTFS is really as good as purported here.
If this were true, then even installing/de-installing programs would
not lead to disk defragmentation, would it?

A file is a file and it gets distributed around the disk by NTFS. More
advanced file systems (not used in XP or Windows) are better than NTFS
with avoiding the file degrag problem. A clue to the file system's
ability to handle file fragmentation is whether or not a defrag utility
is delivered with the OS. Windows XP delivers a defrag utility.

That being said ... how badly your file system becomes fragmented is
indeed dependant on the type of use. It's not just program
install/de-install. I believe that defraging my disk a half dozen
times a year or so does improve things. I don't believe (not data, just
a "belief") that with today's OS's and large hard disks defragging is as
important as it was 10 or 15 years ago. NTFS was, however, designed and
implemented during that era.

I suspect the real issue at your company is that they don't want to give
out Admin priviledges on the machines to enable the XP defrag program
(and the disk checker/scanner) to work. From the company's perspective,
that opens up other issues and risks. That's their business.

Perhaps the compromise is that once a month or so you invite the support
folks to your machine for them to login as administrator and run the
defrag program for you.

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Greetings --

That email was seemingly sent out by someone who has no real
experience maintaining WinNT/2K/XP PCs. He has apparently succumbed
to marketing hype, rather than even bothering to try observing
technical facts. He doesn't even seem to be aware that there's no
such thing as "scandisk" on any WinNT-based operating system.

Your network administrator has such a poor grasp of simple English
syntax and grammar that it's hard to take anything he's written (and
there were some glaring technical inconsistencies, if I understood the
broken English correctly) seriously. I don't believe he's actually
quoting any official Microsoft document. He certainly displays a
woeful ignorance of the way the hard drive's swap file and temporary
files are constantly growing and shrinking many times a day as data
files and emails are created, opened, read, re-written, deleted, etc.
Installing and removing programs are certainly _not_ the sole causes
of fragmentation.

Now, should all of the network's users be granted administrative
privileges to their workstations so they can defrag their own PCs (and
start installing all kinds of crapware)? Most definitely not.
Leaving aside the glaringly obvious security consequences, doing so
would invariably cause a massive increase in the workload of your IT
department's technical support personnel, as they're called upon to
frequently repair the damage done to the workstations by all-powerful
but ignorant users. Instead, your IT department should do as any
responsible and pro-active IT department would: implement a means of
automatically defragging the workstations' hard drives, preferably
during non-business hours, on a periodic basis.


Bruce Chambers

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

 

[hu man]

Well said.
Has anyone ever run the defrag after a clean install? I have, in both Fat
and NTFS (before installing anyother software), and both had high levels of
fragmentation (or at least what I would expect after a clean install).