Defragmentation in Win XP

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Perpetual XP Argument #4 - Whether to Defrag and does it Help ?

Personal answer is yes. XP uses a process called Prefetching and
uses it's native defrag to accomplish it. Beyond that it's still a good
maintenance operation to defrag. How often depends on the level
of fragmentation on the drive. No schedule works for all systems.
If the PC hasn't had a full defrag done for a long time, you will get
some immediate performance gains by defragmenting.

Newer drives that have 8-16 Megabytes of on-board cache can
lessen the impact of fragmentation. But it still happens and does
result in slower operation.

This topic is one of those "Yes, No - Good, Bad - Matters, Does
Not" that is bound to trigger a day-long thread of points and
counterpoints.
 
Mikle said:
Is Microsoft recommend to defrag WinXP or not?
and why?
Click to expand...

No, like Solitaire, they just put the defrag utility there for your
amusement.

Seriously, you should defrag regularly, especially after installing or
uninstalling a program.

Alias
 
Is Microsoft recommend to defrag WinXP or not?
and why?
Click to expand...

It has nothing to do with Windows OS, it's about how you use your drive
space. The same is true on many OS Platforms.

If you don't delete or edit files, then you don't have much
fragmentation. If you delete or edit files a lot, then you have
fragmentation.

In the case of many typical computers, a monthly defrag will benefit
your disk performance, most benefit is the first defrag, but monthly or
every 6 months helps keep things in good shape.

On busy drive systems, where you do a lot of editing/deleting/adding,
you might want to automate the monthly defrag.
 
Leythos said:
It has nothing to do with Windows OS, it's about how you use your drive
space. The same is true on many OS Platforms.

If you don't delete or edit files, then you don't have much
fragmentation. If you delete or edit files a lot, then you have
fragmentation.

In the case of many typical computers, a monthly defrag will benefit
your disk performance, most benefit is the first defrag, but monthly or
every 6 months helps keep things in good shape.

On busy drive systems, where you do a lot of editing/deleting/adding,
you might want to automate the monthly defrag.
Click to expand...

You want to defrag:

After installing XP

After installing SP2

After installing programs of any significance like Office.

After uninstalling programs, especially big ones.

Whenever there are more than 100 fragmented files.

Alias
 
aka@ said:
You want to defrag:

After installing XP

After installing SP2

After installing programs of any significance like Office.

After uninstalling programs, especially big ones.

Whenever there are more than 100 fragmented files.
Click to expand...

And where you access a single or small group of LARGE files that are
fragmented. A single 2GB file, fragmented into 1000 parts, benefits from
being packed (defragmented).

Again, is all about how the data/files are used.

One other thing to mention - some files can not be defragmented while
the service that controls them is running - as an example, if you
install MS SQL (any version) on your Windows XP computer, as long as the
SQL Services are running, the database files will not be defragmented.
The same is true if you have Outlook Open, the PST file will not be
defragmented.
 
Leythos wrote on a day that will go down in history because we are in
agreement:
And where you access a single or small group of LARGE files that are
fragmented. A single 2GB file, fragmented into 1000 parts, benefits from
being packed (defragmented).

Again, is all about how the data/files are used.

One other thing to mention - some files can not be defragmented while
the service that controls them is running - as an example, if you
install MS SQL (any version) on your Windows XP computer, as long as the
SQL Services are running, the database files will not be defragmented.
The same is true if you have Outlook Open, the PST file will not be
defragmented.
Click to expand...

And one should disable the AV auto scan.

Alias
 
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