Windows 10: How often should I defragment my hard drive?

I hear that defragmenting shortens the life span of a hard drive. Is this true?

Also, how often should I defrag? Windows has schedules for weekly and monthly optimizations, which is better? Or should I just manually perform it whenever defragmentation reaches a certain threshold?

:)

 

System Cleaning.

How Often Should You Defrag Your Hard Drive?

Deciding how often to defrag your hard drive depends on how you use your computer. If you load, save and add to files on a regular basis, your system might require more frequent defragging than someone who
only turns on their computer every few days.

Most people should defrag their hard drives about once a month, but your computer might need it more frequently. Windows users can use the built-in disk defragmenter utility on their computers. Run a system
scan, then follow the tool's device. It will tell you whether or not your hard drive requires defragging.

I'm not a big fan of the Windows Disk Cleanup feature. I run the freeware CCleaner (formerly CrapCleaner) to clean things up every week
or so. It depends on what I've been doing, since some activities create a lot of temporary files. When you have a lot of temporary files, performance can be affected noticeably, which is the main reason I clean things up regularly.

The default settings in CCleaner go slightly too far in my opinion, so I always disable a few categories, leaving it configured to delete the following:

Internet Explorer > Temporary Internet files

System > Empty Recycle Bin

System > Temporary files

Firefox/Mozilla > Internet cache

Opera > Internet cache

Google Chrome > Internet cache

 

defragging a nokia x6, and the problems that might occur to the mass memory

i have a nokia X6 16gb. is it ok to defrag the mass memory? will i do any harm to the memory?

how often should i defrag the memory?

also i have another query, does the X6 have a flash memory similar to usb flash drives, or a mini hdd?

 

I would just let the scheduled task do its job. You can run the analysis once in a while to check it's functioning OK. If it says zero, no further action is required.

 

Weekly or monthly?

 

Depends how requently you change files but I would say monthly.

 

I just let Windows decide when to do it. I have never changed this setting.

I think by default Windows Optimizes the disks every Wednesday at 3 AM.

Also monthly is probably to long to wait. A lot of files will get fragmented even on a SSD.

 

Deciding how often to defrag your hard drive depends on how you use your computer. If you load, save and add to files on a regular basis, your system might require more frequent defragging than someone who only turns on their computer every few days.

Most people should defrag their hard drives about once a month, but your computer might need it more frequently.

 

Why do people persist in this sort of outdated advice. Windows 10 automatically defrags in background weekly by default. There is no point in altering this setting. In fact, doing it this way keeps drive in good shape.

Also better advice is to keep data on a separate drive or partition as then the main OS drive is not altered that much and hence will not get fragmented significantly anyway.

In simple terms, just let Windows 10 do its job.

 

Bill Gates suggests once a week

 

Hi there

Ever since Windows 3.1 I have NEVER bothered defragging any HDD - IMO there's never any point in it. With SSD's there's no mechanical parts so don't even THINK of defragging one of those. On Windows the job can take a long time on a large HDD and I doubt if anybody would notice any improvement at all.

If you really MUST re-order your HDD a far quicker and better way is simply to take an image via Macrium (the Free version is good enough) and restore it again - probably a zillion times faster and will optimise empty space on the HDD.

Otherwise just leave it to Windows.

It's amazing how much old outdated stuff persists for years - for example modern SSD's probably have a far longer MTBF (mean time before failure for our Non Engineers friends) than standard HDD's but people are still concerned about read / write life cycles - modern SSD's will probably outlast your current computer (and your next one too if you swap the drives).

Over the years the biggest problem I've seen with slow computers is actually the POOR quality of older HDD's - these days decent HDD's are decently OK and most computers have enough RAM in them to work properly.

The absolute best advice I can give anybody on how to improve performance on a slow computer - especially older models is to replace HDD's with SSD's wherever possible. Assuming there's enough RAM in the machine to service the users workload an SSD wil pay HUGE dividends in performance - far better for most than updating the processor - and keep the OS _ programs separate from your Data drives. Unless you are an extreme gamer etc most users won't use anything like the full power of the CPU they've got now - even an Intel i3 Celeron is probably more than sufficient for typical users.

Cheers
jimbo

 

Maybe you should keep your suggestion to yourself you do sound like a person who does not understand fragmentation as you have suggested we should not defragment HDD even its fragmented badly.

Disk fragmentation occurs when files are broken into hundreds or even thousands of pieces and scattered across your hard drive. This occurs naturally whenever files get created, deleted, or extended and even when the operating system is first installed. Even if you have plenty of free space, Windows still fragments files and before you know it, your once fast system starts to slow down. Microsoft recognizes fragmentation as a problem and recommends defragmenting your drives regularly.

 

Hi there.
This actually isn't a mega problem as the speed of the OS and the way the I/O is handled can easily accomodate long file chains. Also remember the entire I/O subsystem has been re-written and improved many times since the original Windows came out.

For those who understand internal OS principles the I/O manager as well as the memory manager have subtasks running such as "Garbage collection" and "Data optimisation" routines so often a long file chain can be optimised "in flight" as any in memory CPU command has to wait for I/O to complete if a READ / WRITE is required.

In any case as I said above there's no mechanical parts on an SSD so those should NEVER be defragged. As to actual HDD defragging I doubt whether a defrag would make ANY difference at all to performance - but a better way if you MUST do it is to image dump via macrium and restore -- far faster and you've got a backup too.

If there's performance issues with the PC it's likely to be other causes rather than Disk defragmentation. Often overlooked are unnecessarily large page / swap files --allocate these to SSD if you can. Similarly don't try and run too many concurrent processes either on a low end machine. Sometimes running 2 lots of 3 will be faster for example than 1 lot of 6. !!

Cheers
jimbo

 

If you have not changed any settings once a week is the default, You can check your settings by typing into Cortana " defrag " and click on " Defrag and Optimize Drives " If you have an SSD it will not defrag them it will run trim or retrim if the drive is heavily fragmented above 15%.

And also if you have system restore turned on and your drive is heavily fragmented it will use defrag even on an SSD, So if you are using system restore I would suggest leaving the optimization up to Windows if you do not want Windows to have a crap load of fragmented files.

 

I defragment after Windows Updates, so MS still decides when. *Biggrin
Do not forget to perform a cleanup before to maximize the effectiveness.
I use Windows defrag command at boot, it takes about 3 mins. For comparison:

EDIT: I forgot to remove drivers before, that is 2GB and this what it looks afterwards. *cry