How Much Fragmentation is Too Much?

[Keebler Elf]

I'm defragging (gotta love that term ) my hard drive and I'm wondering how much fragmentation is too much?

I was at 41% but now I'm done to 29% and dropping. I'll probably continue to defrag until it no longer recommends I do so but I'm wondering how low the threshold is.

Also, can you defrag even if it's not recommended?

 

[cypherpunk]

If you don't need as much performance as possible or you don't read/write a lot of large files, it usually doesn't matter at all.

 

[Keebler Elf]

But if you do... how much fragmentation is too much?

 

[Never Compromised]

But if you do... how much fragmentation is too much?

If you are really serious, you need to optimize the disk. Which entails a third party application and booting from a CD/DVD and running the utility.

Defrag refers to putting files back together so that they are not fragmented across the hard drive.

Optimization is not only putting the files back together, but moving the files to get all the drive's free space together.

If you are going to take the time to defrag, get the number as low as possible. You only have to defrag once every 2 or 3 months, and optimize every 6 months or year. Depending on what you are doing with your drives, of course.

 

[Crixus]

You can degrag whenever you like - it doesn't harm anything. Think of it kind of like vaccuuming your floors. They might not need it, but vaccuuming them doesn't hurt them. Well - in theory you're shortening the lifespan of your disc by a miniscule percentage with the extra read/write cycle - but I wouldn't worry about it.

As for fragmentation threshold: 41% ?! Wow. I've never seen more than 10%-15% defragmentation, myself.

As for how often, see the comment about vaccuuming floors. If you have a lot of foot traffic, you need to vaccuum more oftern. If the house stands unoccupied, not so much. I do a lot of large file transfers on and off drives, so I have my system drives degragmented every couple of days. My systems are set up to run anti-virals, anti-spyware, and defrag all in one go, every couple of days, between 3am and 6am. I might be overdoing it, but at 3am to 6am the system only my server is likely to be busy with disk IO, so it isn't interferring with anything else.

Although Compromised's comment has me wondering about doing disk optiminzation periodically now.

 

[WoodPeckr]

My understanding is you can defrag as often as you like, it keeps the HDD nice and tidy.

Or you can do what I did and never have to defrag again by switching to linux....

 

[Keebler Elf]

I copy, transfer, and delete a lot of files from this drive and I've never defragged before so I'm not surprised it's so high.

Now that I know I'll be defragging more often.

 

[LadiesMan69]

I was at 41% but now I'm done to 29% and dropping. I'll probably continue to defrag until it no longer recommends I do so but I'm wondering how low the threshold is.
Also, can you defrag even if it's not recommended?

Keebler, you can defrag as often as you like just make sure if you are doing it on a laptop, that it is not on battery power as you can damage the File allocation table (The info that tells your O/S where your file is on the hard drive) if you lose power in middle of a defrag.

Here is a nice web site on Defragging if you want to learn more ...

However, If your defrag is getting that high you need either to clean out a lot of disk space or buy a larger drive as clearly windows is not having enough free space to store your files sequencially. I am a firm believer in partitions to help reduce defragmation so you may even want to consider doing that and putting the files that you add/delete the most in a partition seperate from your windows folder. this will keep your O/S optimized as your fragmentation will not be affecting the area where windows operates from.

Once you have enough free space, your defrag program will work much better. Currently, you are not getting your fragmentation percent lowered because there is no room for your defrag program to work. My guess is also that you probably have a lot of large files (DVD movies or other videos) which are hard to defrag in low disk environment.

If you are using the windows defrag, it is very basic and will not work well in low disk space environment. When I set up PCs , I usually install IODefrag which is a good free defrag progam, much better than the 1 provided with windows. With IODefrag, you can auto schedule your defrags so you do not have to work hard running defrag all the time.

 

[Never Compromised]

Compromised, do you have any tools that you can recommend?

I'm a Mac guy, so I don't know of any for the PC from first hand experience. Norton Utilities was the cat's ass for the Mac until they decided to stop developing for the Mac.

 

[WoodPeckr]

I am a firm believer in partitions to help reduce defragmation so you may even want to consider doing that and putting the files that you add/delete the most in a partition seperate from your windows folder. this will keep your O/S optimized as your fragmentation will not be affecting the area where windows operates from.

I second the separate partitions idea to.

A buddy at work told me this also. I put XP on a 20GB partition, the rest goes to storage and a 20GB partition for linux. This way whenever I defrag XP it doesn't take hours to complete a defrag and everything runs very well.
On my laptop I have 20GB for linux and left the rest to Vista and don't care that much since I seldom use Vista.
Other important files are stored on another ext HDD.

 

[Anynym]

The value of defragmenting varies, too, by file system used (and to a small extent, by OS). FAT is terrible for fragmentation and disk performance degradation over time; EXT3 is pretty good. NTFS is probably somewhere in the middle, although I'm too tired to look up authoritative sources on how it behaves.

 

[Keebler Elf]

A buddy at work told me this also. I put XP on a 20GB partition, the rest goes to storage

This is what I do as well. The drive in question is a purely storage drive however.

 

[Keebler Elf]

However, If your defrag is getting that high you need either to clean out a lot of disk space or buy a larger drive as clearly windows is not having enough free space to store your files sequencially.

Yeah, I've discovered that. I think I've turned a corner though because up til now when I defrag it only gets to around 5-6% defragged and then stops. Now I'm at 43% and still counting.

 

[LadiesMan69]

The value of defragmenting varies, too, by file system used (and to a small extent, by OS). FAT is terrible for fragmentation and disk performance degradation over time; EXT3 is pretty good. NTFS is probably somewhere in the middle, although I'm too tired to look up authoritative sources on how it behaves.

You are correct, FAT is the worst in fragmentation, NTFS much better.

FAT (File Allocation Table) is good if you have a lot of small files (MP3, JPG, DOC, TXT, XLS ...) It is the old file system which was designed for small file clusters. NTFS (New Technology File system) is good for Large Files (ISO, MOV, VOB, Swap files) which are all the norm these days. It also has file encryption technology which the old FAT and FAT32 (Win 95/Me/98) lack.

Personally I prefer to store personal data files (Since they are small size files) on a FAT partition so if the computer crashes I can even get to my data with a (heaven forbid) DOS boot disk. With the other file systems, you have to re-install windows to see your data files. However, if you want to have data security, NTFS is the better choice.

The other big advantage of having Windows on its own seperate partition? If your windows crashes or you re-install 1-2 times a year, you just format the windows partition and re-install. All your other data remains as is.

 

[Keebler Elf]

Finally completed the defragging and now it's back down to 0% fragmentation. Files all nice and compressed to boot.

Aces!

 

[dcbogey]

I'm a Mac guy, so I don't know of any for the PC from first hand experience. Norton Utilities was the cat's ass for the Mac until they decided to stop developing for the Mac.

Apparently with Mac OS X, you don't need to.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1375

 

[spheroyds]

Factors For Successful Disk Optimization

1. Use TWO hard drives and use the second one for frequent file usage - dowloading PORN etc.

2. Ensure that both drives are primary on IDE or use SATA (sata2 not a biggie, channel never gets saturated enough)

3. Use decent high speed drives 7200 rpm or above Seagate/WD midrange, not that low end crap everybody uses and expects to last long


If you use #1 alone, you'll minimize the maintenance by 90%

 

[kbluejayk]

I use an excellent defrag program from Auslogics. It is much better than the MS default defragger. You can download it from their website here (Free!);-

http://www.auslogics.com/en/software/disk-defrag/download

They also have an Optimizer program for which they charge a small fee but have not tried it. I don't think you really need it unless you have heavy usage on your pc...

 

[oremo123]

One of the better ones out there is Diskeeper. Has option to turn on automatic defrag for when your computer is not using resources. Especially good if you've been downloading a lot. There is a fee, but its worth every penny.