Haydon said:
Only done it once so far as I have only had the PC a week, but it took
quite a few hours on my PC. However, that was only one drive and it was
fairly empty.
One of the things I don't like is that it gives you no feedback AT ALL on
what it is doing and how long it will be.
I don't know if you remember the Windows 98 defrag, it took forever, but
at least you could see what it was doing and because you knew it was going
to take a long time, you would do it over night. Windows XP was good,
because it was quick and you could see what is was doing.
I have no problems with it taking a while if it needs to, as long as you
know it's going to take a while. But, when it just says 'This may take
from a few minutes, to a few hours', this is very, very poor!
You have to understand that Vista isn't Windows 98. It isn't even XP. Things
work differently, perhaps better or perhaps worse, but it helps to
understand that and keep it in mind.
Defrag is a case in point. Users of other operating systems besides Windows
don't obsess over disk fragmentation. Many of them don't even know it can be
a problem. Why? Because their operating system takes care of things in the
background, without bothering them.
This is what Microsoft are trying to move towards, hence the dearth of
information on the defrag process. If you want to watch something while
defrag is running, then put in a DVD or something.
Another reason, as covered in previous posts here and a couple of blog
entries, Microsoft's file system team basically found that defrag was lying
to you. That thing you used to watch had very little to do with what was
actually happening on your disk, and as hard disks got bigger and bigger
this information was only going to become less useful. So we're back to
popping in a DVD if you need to watch something while defrag is running. A
quick burst of whatever movie or TV series you enjoy will be far more
enjoyable than the defrag screen, and have about as much relevance to what
is taking place on your disk.
Of course, if you don't like that answer you could buy one of the many third
party defrag programs out there, as these still give you pretty pictures to
watch. Have to show you where the money went, after all! But except in a few
special circumstances (you've just upgraded, or made other major changes to
the disk contents, you're running a server of some kind that generates lots
of file activity, etc), I doubt these will actually give you any improvement
in performance over just letting the scheduled defragger process run and do
its thing, coupled with running a manual defrag every month or two.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying defrag doesn't matter. It does. It
certainly should be part of your regular maintenance tasks on your computer
(whether carried out by you or by the job scheduler), but why does it need
to be something you sit and watch?
