Defraging Hard Drive

[Clem]

Hi,
The below message is from one of our "tech" guys and I/we
are wondering if this information is correct or if this
guy is just impressed with himself. Any feed back would
be helpful and any tech sources would backup our beliefs
that he is wrong. This is Windows XP Pro.
Thanks for your time and help.
Clem


"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."

 

[Thorsten Matzner]

The below message is from one of our "tech" guys and I/we
are wondering if this information is correct or if this
guy is just impressed with himself. Any feed back would
be helpful and any tech sources would backup our beliefs
that he is wrong. This is Windows XP Pro.

What should be wrong? Of course, NTFS drives also will fragment over
time. You can test this by running the Disk Defragmenter from time to
time. The tool will tell you when time has come to defragment. On this
way you can also find out how often you need to defrag.

 

[Jake]

-----Original Message-----

Hi,
The below message is from one of our "tech" guys and I/we
are wondering if this information is correct or if this
guy is just impressed with himself. Any feed back would
be helpful and any tech sources would backup our beliefs
that he is wrong. This is Windows XP Pro.
Thanks for your time and help.
Clem


"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."


.
As a computer programmer and technician, defragging

should be done at least once per week irregardless of use
or abuse. File fragments are scattered all over the
harddrive while creating and updating files. A far
better program is Norton's optimizing feature, it
utilizes "gaps" and unused sectors creating a "speed disk"

 

[Mad Max]

-----Original Message-----

Hi,
The below message is from one of our "tech" guys and I/we
are wondering if this information is correct or if this
guy is just impressed with himself. Any feed back would
be helpful and any tech sources would backup our beliefs
that he is wrong. This is Windows XP Pro.
Thanks for your time and help.
Clem


"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."


.
First of all I'm computer illiterate. That said ,Windows

XP does not have the scandisk feature. So do we need to
go any farther ?
Personally, I use the check disk feature, and then go to
the defrag and let it analyze and tell me if I need a
defrag.
With computers I use the KISS technique. ( keep it
simple,STUPID !) And that is about as simple as it can be.
Using those other programs to do the same job is
technically over my head. I tried a couple of things and
could'nt get past the introduction. I'm still struggling
with winzip,and wish I'd never heard of it. So, before
recommending anything to a dummy, check to see if he is
wearing his sign. I sometimes forget to wear my sign and
people do'nt know that I am STUPID.