What activity is hardest on a hard drive

[waverider]

Hi, I wonder really how often one should defrag ? Is there a formula of some kind, ie defrag per so many hours of use ? Also can one defrag too often ? Thanks in advance

[Redfallon]

I lost several weeks worth of data in a spreadsheet file not too long ago. I now back it up to 2 different webservers in 2 different states, another local drive in my office, a tape drive with a set of rotated tapes (including some off site) in my office, a pair of external USB HDD's with one taken out of the office nightly, and a USB flash drive which I take home with me everynite. MY backups are done automatically with scripts. After losing 2 weeks worth of data I decided not to play around any longer.

[waiting]

Originally Posted by glc The free software only clones drives. It does not let you make a compressed image like Ghost and other imaging software.

Thanks for the Ghost idea. I've installed Ghost and I'd like to ask if you tech's have any tips for beginners..... It would be nice to restore a hard drive if it crashes. Hopefully restoring a hard drive is easier than reinstalling WinXP. Are users happy with Ghost?

Hi Wavetrider.....A tech type told me not to defrag too often...whatever that meant.........somebody out there knows the answer to yur question.

[Cricket]

Originally Posted by waverider Hi, I wonder really how often one should defrag ? Is there a formula of some kind, ie defrag per so many hours of use ? Also can one defrag too often ? Thanks in advance

I defrag my computers once a week. Some people will defrag only when the hard drive needs it. And others will defrag once a day. And if you use DisKeeper you can set it to Automatic (defrags in background) and just forget about it completely. How often you should defrag will depend on how you use your computer.

Originally Posted by waiting Thanks for the Ghost idea. I've installed Ghost and I'd like to ask if you tech's have any tips for beginners..... It would be nice to restore a hard drive if it crashes. Hopefully restoring a hard drive is easier than reinstalling WinXP. Are users happy with Ghost?

If you haven't already seen this site, here's Radified Guide To Norton Ghost.

Cricket

[TwoRails]

Waverider, defrag intervals can also depend on such usage and the number of partitions you have. If you have, say, a partition just for games, and one for word processing, and so on, then you'd only defrag after you use those logical drives. I like to defrag after program install/removal. I defrag the 'C' drive more often then, say, my 'G' (games) drive. I rarely defrag my word processor / database drive, as I don't do much of either anymore.

[waiting]

Cricket: Thanks for the good site. It answered lots of my questions. One more question please: Have you ever used a "Ghost boot disk" to recover your computer when Windows refuses to start up? Did Ghost do its job without error messages?

[waverider]

Thanks for the defrag info, one more question. Has anyone here defragged without disabling GO BACK ? It would be nice not to have to lose our history. Thanks again.