Defragging a hard drive, pros and cons

[cubicaltroll]

I was in my local computer store, and the tech there said that defragging a hard drive is not a good thing. I normally would have ignored this statement except he was saying it to a computer user . I this ran contrary to everything I have ever been taught, and he was saying it to someone who would have seriously been hurt if it wasnt true. His defense was that he was told this in certification class at Microsoft as an aside. He stated he is certified and is a beta tester for Microsoft. He has a copy of long horn running in his back room, so this really confused me. He stated that the defrag programs out there are intented for pristine systems. I think he blowing smoke, but wanted to find out what other professional administrators / techs say to such a statement. "I never defrag my drives, and I have never had a problem." I think either he is full of it, or is trying very hard to drum up business in an unethical way. Help me on this, I dont want to report someone to the Better Business Bureau without first checking my facts out. Please let me know if there are any ethical grounds to make such a statement.

[TwoRails]

Defrag does not hurt anything. Yes, it is still beneficial. What is going on, though, is more and more folks are saying that the speed increase after defragged is not anywhere where it used to be with older drives. I haven't run any benchmarks to prove or disprove that, but that logic does make sense in a way: modern drives are extremely fast and noticing just a fraction of speed increase would be impossible without performing benchmarks. With the older, slower drives, that, heck, any improvement was noticeable to the user.

[bailey]

based on my experience, fefragong the hard drive is a necessary thing to do if you are one who is always installing things and downloading things and then removeing them later, this process will fragmet the drive and then it will start to run slowly because it now has to search for the data all over the drive.
by doing the defrag, you place all the files and data in the proper order so the drive does not have to search so muh and things will run much smoother and faster.

but then if your one who never does the adding and removing of things, then you probly will never need to do the defrag, but then it can't hurt to do it.

[mairving]

Originally Posted by cubicaltroll ...he was saying it to someone who would have seriously been hurt if it wasnt true. I think either he is full of it, or is trying very hard to drum up business in an unethical way. Help me on this, I dont want to report someone to the Better Business Bureau without first checking my facts out. Please let me know if there are any ethical grounds to make such a statement.

I am confused by this. How could someone be hurt by him saying that. I am not sure how he could drum up business by telling someone to not defrag their hard drive. The BBB wouldn't get involved since this doesn't involve any kind of business practice, i.e. he hasn't wronged anyone. He was merely stating his opinion.

I rarely if ever defrag my hard drive. Newer drives and newer file systems don't require frequent defrags. Defragging your hard drive on a too frequent basis can shorten the life of your hard drive since defragmenting is very disk intensive.

[XenaWP]

Originally Posted by mairving ... I rarely if ever defrag my hard drive. Newer drives and newer file systems don't require frequent defrags. Defragging your hard drive on a too frequent basis can shorten the life of your hard drive since defragmenting is very disk intensive.

I have heard that said before.

Upon reflection, I wonder if there is any, you know, proof, or if it's "urban computer legend." After all, defragging only does, all at once, what the disk is doing anyway to find the parts of fragged files. Except if it's a frequently used fragged file, you're actually going to work the drive more accessing it in a fragged state over and over again. Defragging should only be disk intensive when you haven't done it in a long time.

See what I'm saying? Not trying to be argumentative, just sharing some thoughts ...

Our IT group now sets up Diskeeper to run automatically. I doubt they want to cause premature failure. So they must see some value gained in having everyone's disks defragged.

[HAL9000]

My computers are on 24/7, so instead of doing nothing, they defrag nightly.... never had any issues with it.

[TwoRails]

I don't do them nightly, but quite regularly, often a couple of times a week and never a problem here, either.

[EzyStvy]

cubicaltroll - since the guy knows so much, go back and ask him why MS includes it in out of their Operating Systems.

[edfair]

I can't remember the last time I defragged any of mine. Maybe around DOS4.0. But I'm not into loading and culling stuff that would be the major cause anyway. And I store downloaded stuff on other than the boot drive to keep it clean.
I do, however, tell my customers to do it if they start getting clogged down.

[Cricket]

I defrag my computers once a week and have been doing so for over 10 years with all the various computers I've owned. I don't feel defragging would cause premature HDD failure because most times when I do defrag it only takes a few minutes and I feel that's nothing to be concerned with. I do feel a little anxious when I do run defrag on a computer that hasn't been defragged in months (or even years) and the defrag takes a really long time but I don't think I've ever seen a computer die during or right after a defrag has been performed.

When I build a computer for someone I write down some instructions on how to perform simple computer maintenance on their new computer (manual virus and malware scans, disk cleanup, defrag, etc...) and how often it should be done. It's up to the new owner if he wants to follow those instructions or not. They paid for the computer and it's their responsibility now, not mine.

The way I look at it is this...it's your computer and you should be able to do whatever it is that you want to do to it. If you don't want to run defrag on the hard drive, then don't. If you do want to run defrag on your computer, then go ahead and run it. It's your computer, not anybody else's.

Cricket

[chipset]

Originally Posted by Cricket I defrag my computers once a week and have been doing so for over 10 years with all the various computers I've owned. I don't feel defragging would cause premature HDD failure because most times when I do defrag it only takes a few minutes and I feel that's nothing to be concerned with. I do feel a little anxious when I do run defrag on a computer that hasn't been defragged in months (or even years) and the defrag takes a really long time but I don't think I've ever seen a computer die during or right after a defrag has been performed. Cricket

I completely agree with you. I have never heard of anyone's drive dying because of defrag. NTFS systems are supposed to deal with the issue if fragmentation better, but they are in no way immune. Fragmentation definitely affects performance, whether its noticeable or not would depend on each person's usage. Cant imagine servers not being defragged and yet giving their best. Even on my personal PC, if i dont defrag, with just downloading movies, browsing, playing with photographs, the drive actually gets fragmented very fast.
There is the argument that defragmenting stresses out the drive. when a drive is defragmented regularly, each defrag takes lesser time. No issues, great performance, the system runs as if it were brand new. However if you leave it fragmented, it lags and hangs. My defrag gets done in less than 20 minutes every 2-3 days. That would definitely be less stressful on the drive than having to access say numerous fragments of a movie file for like 2 hours.

[glc]

I use Diskeeper Pro in the set it and forget it mode - it does each drive once or twice a day and takes less than 1 minute each time.

[Petef56]

Originally Posted by mairving I rarely if ever defrag my hard drive. Newer drives and newer file systems don't require frequent defrags. Defragging your hard drive on a too frequent basis can shorten the life of your hard drive since defragmenting is very disk intensive.

mairving, I agree with your statement above and let me add one more point.
On newer drives and file systems, defragging will not significantly improve performance
(speed), but common sense makes me think that a defragged drive will last longer
because there would be significantly less mechanical strain during normal daily use.

I defrag my hard drives about every 6 months.

---pete---

[rwest]

I do alot of video editing of large files that get loaded and unloaded regularly. I also have family members that load up the pc with a bunch of garbage and after a while these games and programs get forgotten about, so they get uninstalled by me. Not only that but every one in my family saves everthing to the my documents folder, there is no organization of files unless I do it. My drives get fragmented and get slow; defragging always helps disk access times. You can see and feel this difference.

I currently own a maxtor 40 gig hdd that's over 6 maybe 7 years old and still going strong. I also just replaced a 160gig SATA OEM hdd from out of a Compaq that's just over the one year warrany. I also have a 10 gig WD over 8-9 years old still being used. Two additonal 20 gig hdds that have been, loaded, unloaded, used, abused and currently operating in systems that I defrag when they slow down. Oh and I had to replace another 12 gig OEM hdd.

Was it the defrag that hurt the newer drive? Could be...not sure either way. I just installed a brand new 250gig SATA Seagate to replace the OEM. We'll have to see how it holds up to my family's abuse. But I'm pretty darn sure I can garruntee defrag always helps heavy users.

Defrag subracts life from a hdd, huh? Well do me a favor and don't tell any of my older drives about it. Okay?

[IonicBond]

I've seen a lot of people on various forums recently claiming that defragging reduces hard drive life. I really wonder where this silly idea originated Defragging is just like any other drive activity..playing a I/O heavy game or watching a divx file - why should it affect the drive adversely?!

If someone is so concerned about drive failure due to defragging, then that person has bigger problems with the overall reliability of the drive itself.

Some people see significant gains after defragging, some don't. It all depends on your usage patterns I feel. I can personally vouch that I do see noticeable improvements in performance after defragging regularly, especially when dealing with large files.

PS: glc, after your comment in another thread, I tried the Diskeeper set-it-and forget it mode on my drive 1 (media files, P2P and random stuff) which sees heavy activity regularly. Works great. I did run a manual defrag on it before I enabled the auto mode, and it stays defragged quite nicely.

[Force Flow]

Originally Posted by glc I use Diskeeper Pro in the set it and forget it mode - it does each drive once or twice a day and takes less than 1 minute each time.

Same thing here. glc actually suggested it, and I ran with it. There is a lot of disk activity on my workstations on a daily basis (programming, multimedia, etc) to take advantage of this.

The only time you *may* encounter issues is if the computer is in the middle of defragging and the power goes out. But, most of the time, the changes of this are very small, and even smaller if you're on a UPS.

You just have to make sure there is enough freespace on the drive to defrag it, which usually requires at least 15% free