defrag a waste of time?

[NETWizz]

Agreed. Also with a Vista and Win7 machine if you move large files regularly. "Techs" who wont do a manual defrag as part of a cleanup/speedup are just being lazy.

Of course, this is your own, subjective, opinion. Maybe "Techs" who won't do a manual defrag have better things to do?

 

[coffee]

Ive read thru alot of posts here about defragging drives and very few posts have hit on the main reason a tech would want to defrag a drive before it gets back to a customer. Im sure I will probably get flamed for this with differing opinions but may the truth be known.

Windows stores data very inefficiently. Doesnt matter if its FAT or NTFS. The first symptoms of not defragging is a slow down in speed. If you let this go long enough you eventually will start to see program errors and blue screens. This is because the longer windows runs without defrag the better the chance that data is going to corrupt.

I have also read about it not being a problem with win-vista or 7 as its scheduled so you really dont need to do a manual defrag. Well, I think the default setting for defragging is something like "Weds at 3am". Since servers are always on this may not be a problem. But for the basic residential customer they usually have their system / laptop off and they are in bed sleeping. Therefore, The defragging never gets done.

For me, There is not a computer that leaves my shop that isnt defragged all the way or for that matter a house call. What is true is that the longer you dont defrag the longer its going to take. Therefore I tell my customers that they should do a defrag once a week. That way it will take less time to do it.

The really bad part about letting defrag slide is that if its going to take hours to defrag (or days!) a weak drive could fail. Doing it once a week will keep that possibility to a minimum.

Of course the payoffs are pretty good for your business. Having a customer proclaim that "after you got done working on it it runs 5 times faster! Just like it did when they bought it!".

Personally, If I have to delay a computer getting delivered to a customer because it still defragging then its delayed.

 

[Cambridge PC Support]

Agreed. Also with a Vista and Win7 machine if you move large files regularly. "Techs" who wont do a manual defrag as part of a cleanup/speedup are just being lazy.

I don't think laziness comes into it

When you consider how much hands-on time it takes to kick off a defrag, then the issue is probably more to do with how much bench time it takes to complete the defrag

Perhaps some techs have a backlog of PCs and don't have enough bench space to hold up the queue with a long defrag

Maybe they need to return the computer to the client asap

 

[coffee]

Perhaps some techs have a backlog of PCs and don't have enough bench space to hold up the queue with a long defrag

Make time or space. Heck, Ill take a laptop and hook it up in my bedroom and let it run if I have too.

If the defrag is going to take a long time then there are problems. The longer defrag takes the faster (to a point of course) the computer is going to perform.

To me, Having a computer leaving my shop with something undone is just not acceptable. Of course lets say its an emergency situation where the business needs it to run then I would set something up to do run it in the very near future. Alot of times on a residental call I will start it as the last step and let it run. Instruct them as to what to do when its done.

What ever works though is the deal.

 

[jogold]

No one has mentioned that data restoration on a dead drive gives better results when the drive is defragged. It's easier for the programs to "put humpty dumpty back together again" when the pieces aren't all over the place. ie. the less fragmented a file is the less guessing and pasting together needed.
So I and my clients (hopefully) defrag weekly.

 

[gunslinger]

Of course, this is your own, subjective, opinion. Maybe "Techs" who won't do a manual defrag have better things to do?

Better things to do? I was under the impression is was our job to make the system run better.

I don't think laziness comes into it
When you consider how much hands-on time it takes to kick off a defrag, then the issue is probably more to do with how much bench time it takes to complete the defrag
Perhaps some techs have a backlog of PCs and don't have enough bench space to hold up the queue with a long defrag
Maybe they need to return the computer to the client asap

If you are so back logged that you can't wait another 15-20 mins on a defrag maybe you need more help at the shop?

 

[TopLevelComp]

If you are so back logged that you can't wait another 15-20 mins on a defrag maybe you need more help at the shop?

Most machines that I work on don't take 15-20 minutes to defrag. Longest one I've had was over 8 hours for a full defrag, on one hard drive. They had two in the machine.

Granted, it got left on over night, but not everyone can spare a computer sitting on a bench for 8 hours just to defrag.

 

[coffee]

Most machines that I work on don't take 15-20 minutes to defrag. Longest one I've had was over 8 hours for a full defrag, on one hard drive. They had two in the machine.

Granted, it got left on over night, but not everyone can spare a computer sitting on a bench for 8 hours just to defrag.

How about setting the defrag to run that night and tell customer to leave it on overnite ? Possibly by morning its done. You could even just put a note with their paperwork to leave it on that night for such a reason.

 

[nesrinamb]

i completely understand the original OP idea as I to have seen some drives that with a defrag are only slightly faster.

I still run defrags as I have seen some drive basically go from being turtles to being cheetahs with just a defrag.

 

[gunslinger]

How about setting the defrag to run that night and tell customer to leave it on overnite ? Possibly by morning its done. You could even just put a note with their paperwork to leave it on that night for such a reason.

This ^^^^^


Also I have not had a defrag take over an hour since Windows 98.

 

[Xander]

On housecalls, I have left a defrag running as the last step countless times. "It's reorganizing the hard drive. Just leave it running and close it when it says it's done. We're otherwise done and there's no need for me to babysit that step." Not one single customer has ever had a problem with that. On the bench, it's usually done but, if they're in a rush, I'll drop a shortcut on the desktop and tell them to be sure to run it at their next opportunity.


As for the validity of defragmenting, I can't find the original article that converted me from monthly to weekly but this is about the same:

Myth #4: You can wear out your hard drive if you defragment too often.
Exactly the opposite is true. When you eliminate fragmentation you greatly reduce the number of disk accesses needed to bring up a file or write to it. Even with the I/O required to defragment a file, the total I/O is much less than working with a fragmented file.
For example, if you have a file that is fragmented into 50 pieces and you access it twice a day for a week, that’s a total of 700 disk accesses (50 X 2 X 7). Defragmenting the file may cost 100 disk accesses (50 reads + 50 writes), but thereafter only one disk access will be required to use the file. That’s 14 disk accesses over the course of a week (2 X 7), plus 100 for the defrag process = 114 total. 700 accesses for the fragmented file versus 114 for the defragged file is quite a difference. But in a real world scenario, this difference would be multiplied hundreds of times for a true picture of performance gain.

Source
The article is an interview with the guy behind Diskkeeper.

 

[Mr.Mike]

Granted that Windows 7 (and Vista) have a decent automatic defrag that works in the background, but I defrag them sometimes when I'm asked to remove a bunch of programs or add programs to a HDD no matter what windows OS. XP machines of course, benefit greatly from defragging.

I'm currently using Puran Defrag as my tool of choice. Here's the link.

Cheers

 

[Jeffk]

really useful learning

Hi, OP here.

I'm new to professional teching, which is why i posted in the 1st place, to find out what more experienced techs think about defrag.

Having read all the posts here I reckon that on the whole it is worth it - on some machines it'll make a massive difference & on others maybe not much. I guess the difference to perormance & how long the defrag takes probably depend on how long since the last defrag & what's been happenening on the PC since then.

As well as 'reassuring' me that defrag's not a waste of time, this thread has been really useful learning for me, as a newbie e.g.

.........The first symptoms of not defragging is a slow down in speed. If you let this go long enough you eventually will start to see program errors and blue screens. This is because the longer windows runs without defrag the better the chance that data is going to corrupt.........

.....The really bad part about letting defrag slide is that if its going to take hours to defrag (or days!) a weak drive could fail. Doing it once a week will keep that possibility to a minimum.

..............As for the validity of defragmenting, I can't find the original article that converted me from monthly to weekly but this is about the same:
Source
The article is an interview with the guy behind Diskkeeper.

No one has mentioned that data restoration on a dead drive gives better results when the drive is defragged. It's easier for the programs to "put humpty dumpty back together again" when the pieces aren't all over the place........

Thanks all!

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

It is not as necessary as it was years ago, and with older OS's.

Years ago with Win9X, if you did a defrag, it made a pretty good difference in performance, giving you a noticeable boost. And with drives being slower back then, any house maintenance of the drive to reorganize things added to the improvement. Especially important when the smaller drives at that time started getting packed..and had less than 20% free space.

Starting with Windows XP it became less necessary. XP started to do some hard drive maintenance on its own, places certain files more optimally on the hard drive. Doing a defrag no longer seems to give the noticeable boost.

Veester and Win7...started doing even more self maintenance...and now with gargantuan fast hard drives the size of the state of Montana...with oodles of free space, fast disk i/o, seek, and TCQ of concurrent hits...it's not so noticeable of a performance boost anymore. And with the OS being self maintaining of the drive...you'll notice a manual defrag doesn't have to do much re-organizing...everything is already kept fairly tidy. It's like vacuuming a floor yourself after the office cleaning people already came through and vacuumed and mopped the floor..your vacuum isn't picking up much more dirt!

 

[coffee]

Starting with Windows XP it became less necessary. XP started to do some hard drive maintenance on its own, places certain files more optimally on the hard drive. Doing a defrag no longer seems to give the noticeable boost.

I totally disagree on this point. Its proven many times in the field that defragging a windows box no matter what the version will dramatically speed up performance depending on how bad the drive is fragmented.

and now with gargantuan fast hard drives the size of the state of Montana...with oodles of free space, fast disk i/o, seek, and TCQ of concurrent hits...it's not so noticeable of a performance boost anymore.

Another point that doesnt make any sense to me. It doesnt matter how fast a drive is or free space in the matter of defragging. Thats like saying "Doesnt matter how many potholes are in a road as cars can go much faster today than they used too". Improvements in drive performance has nothing to do with why you "Dont need to defrag anymore".

XP started to do some hard drive maintenance on its own, places certain files more optimally on the hard drive.

Really? I would hardly think this holds water either.

 

[joydivision]

Here is what I do (I either allow 24 hours on my bench or leave it running at a clients).

Windows XP - Always check it, if it needs it run Defragler.
Windows Vista - Check it on Defragler but it rarely needs doing
Windows 7 - Check it with the Windows one but don't think I've ever had to it.

NTFS is less prone to need defragging, but FAT systems were a nightmare and Acer used FAT32 upto around 2004.

 

[Xander]

Really, Joy? You find Vista rarely needs it? I find it's rarely less than 25% with Win7 being only a bit better. They may handle the fragmentation better but they're always a lot worse than XP was in that respect.

 

[Jeffk]

helps with W7 too

............Windows 7 - Check it with the Windows one but don't think I've ever had to it

I've got W7 home premium on a PC & have seen some improvement after defragging, especially after I'd deleted +/- 50Gb of files recently. It also freed up a further 4Gb of space.

Also, I’d be interested to hear what people think the advantages of defraggler is over Win defrag….& what about Puran or Auslogic?

.....I was trying out a couple of free defraggers over the weeken and as lots of people rave about Defraggler I tried it on a machine and it locked up. Having to do a warm reboot during a defrag did not fill me with confidence.

@sassenach I’ve used defraggler loads & never had that prob, & never heard anyone anyone else mention anything like that – you’re sure it wasn’t something else causing the reboot?

 

[NETWizz]

I Im sure I will probably get flamed for this with differing opinions but may the truth be known.

Windows stores data very inefficiently. Doesnt matter if its FAT or NTFS. The first symptoms of not defragging is a slow down in speed. If you let this go long enough you eventually will start to see program errors and blue screens. This is because the longer windows runs without defrag the better the chance that data is going to corrupt.

I have also read about it not being a problem with win-vista or 7 as its scheduled so you really dont need to do a manual defrag. Well, I think the default setting for defragging is something like "Weds at 3am". Since servers are always on this may not be a problem. But for the basic residential customer they usually have their system / laptop off and they are in bed sleeping. Therefore, The defragging never gets done.

Some of what you said sounds very reasonable to me, but much of what you say is your own words "differing opinions," too. You may call it "the truth" but the above has some mis-information.


Sure, Windows (Linux, Mac, Novell, BSD) store data inefficiently... and I agree that a drive seeking around certainly causes a slight slow down in speed. A large amount of data is now Cached being systems have a LOT more RAM than in the past and Windows Vista/7 handle that better (especially with x64 architectures that can handle lots of RAM). Basically Microsoft has taken a page out of the Linux/BSD book and caches CPU threads, disk access, and that sort of thing better than in older versions of Windows. Open Performance monitor then open & close some APPS. You will see the cached value go up and available down when you open a program. Close it and the Available goes back up but the cached doesn't. The data you just pulled from disk is still in RAM incase you need that data again, so it doesn't have to go back to disk. If Windows (Linux, BSD, MacOS) needs the RAM it will just write over the cached pages as if it is free memory.


If you let this go on, you will NOT see program errors or Blue Screens from non-defragged systems. That statement is totally wrong! The data also does NOT get corrupted for lack of Defragging. As long as the drive is good/healthy and not completely filled up to where data can't be written back to it there will not be any corruption simply because it isn't defragged. If a drive is weak/failing, all bets are off (regardless of whether it is defragged)!

*********************

I can't believe you made this statement (This is pure conjecture at best): "for the residential customer... they have system off... the defragging never gets done."

Really, what makes you say that? Where did you get that information? <==This is your OWN theory and Mis-Information.

^^^^^^ Microsoft did, actually think these types of problems through with Scheduled Tasks.


Here is my proof:

Windows has Defrag set automatically to "Run Task as Soon as Possible after a scheduled start is missed" :

Next, you will probably argue that Windows doesn't really, actually keep on top of it... and that in your experience it doesn't get done.


The Event Viewer Says it does! I filtered all 46,788] events relating to "Microsoft Defrag" on my system:

^^^^^^ The above is proof it defragged at 7:48 PM though the schedule is 1 AM Every Wednesday (at least on this particular system).



My system NEVER gets checked because I don't care For the purpose of this article, let's take a look:

Hum 0% fragmented... Not bad considering I have not even opened the Defragmenter ... EVER on this system in over 2 years.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Really? I would hardly think this holds water either.

Really? Are you new to the field and unfamiliar with the WinXP days? Miss the memo's on how XP's new (at the time) defrag features such as how it now optimizes boot and prefetch nformation, and file placement of certain types of files on the outer parts of the platter?

Your attempt at analogy humor with the car and pothole statement also fails. The logic I'm saying is usually pretty easy to grasp. Back in the Win9X days, running a defrag would gain you a nice gain in performance...noticeable and quite measurable, your bootup might improve....say...20%. These days, the way drives work, the improvement is far less...you'll probably get several% gain in performance. But then again...as some of us that read the memo's on Win7 learned...the OS does it for your anyways. It's become one of those topics not worth biting your fingernails or losing sleep over.