Defragmenting hard drive question

[Nero]

I have WinXP and I tried defragmenting my hard drive but it says I
have 3% space left and I should have a minimum of15% (my hard drive's
jammed with stuff). Well the program asked if I wanted to defragment
it anyway, so I said yes and it defragmented. What I want to know is
what's the difference if you defragment it while you have 15% space
left instead of 3%? Does it do a better job at the defragmenting or
what?

 

[Rod Speed]

I have WinXP and I tried defragmenting my hard drive but it says I
have 3% space left and I should have a minimum of15% (my hard drive's
jammed with stuff). Well the program asked if I wanted to defragment
it anyway, so I said yes and it defragmented. What I want to know is
what's the difference if you defragment it while you have 15% space
left instead of 3%? Does it do a better job at the defragmenting or what?

Yes.

But its academic, there isnt any real point in
defragging modern personal desktop systems.

 

[Joe Doe]

Yes.

But its academic, there isnt any real point in
defragging modern personal desktop systems.

Would'nt it help in data recovery should that ever need to be done?

Roland

 

[Rod Speed]

Would'nt it help in data recovery should that ever need to be done?

Sure, but it makes a lot more sense to backup what matters instead.

 

[Ardent]

X-No-Archive: yes

I have WinXP and I tried defragmenting my hard drive but it says I
have 3% space left and I should have a minimum of15% (my hard drive's
jammed with stuff). Well the program asked if I wanted to defragment
it anyway, so I said yes and it defragmented. What I want to know is
what's the difference if you defragment it while you have 15% space
left instead of 3%? Does it do a better job at the defragmenting or
what?

Many files are too much fragmented that it is necessary to reassemble
them elsewhere and copy them back when there is space. So some free
space is required for this purpose. It will also work if the free
space is less than 15% but the defragmenting may slow down.

HTH