Boy, Do I Hate An Initial Defragging

S

Stoic Sentinel

New Member
While I'm defragging my new computer for the first time after all my installs, let me as the question: What exactly does "defragging" you computer do? I think it breaks up fragments and makes it easier to retrieve for the computer, I'm probably wrong, though. Your thoughts?
 
im not quite sure how to explain it so ill draw a picture, it pretty much moves all data to one part so it can read it faster
here is a hard drive that is not defragged, 0's = data
|0 00 0 0 0 0 |
| 0 0 0 00 0 0 |
| 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 |

and here is after defragging

|0000000 |
|0000000 |
|0000000 |
 
^^yea, i found this, and it does a good job describing it

It rearranges the files on your hard drive so it is quicker to access. You hard drive is a magnetic disk and the head will write dots on any place it finds, placer all of dots on only one section of the disk will make access for the head a bit faster.
 
ganzey said:
^^yea, i found this, and it does a good job describing it

It rearranges the files on your hard drive so it is quicker to access. You hard drive is a magnetic disk and the head will write dots on any place it finds, placer all of dots on only one section of the disk will make access for the head a bit faster.
Click to expand...

It's taking so damn long! It's been like 2 hours and it's still at 72%. I need to do this and then run Prime95 for a little, might run it overnight.
 
Stoic Sentinel said:
It's taking so damn long! It's been like 2 hours and it's still at 72%. I need to do this and then run Prime95 for a little, might run it overnight.
Click to expand...

yea, u got a 500gb hdd. the first time i defragged it took about 3 hrs and i have about 400gbs of data. it will go faster if you do it more often
 
Yeah, when your computer writes data to the hard drive, it just scatters it to wherever is available, and it's not always organized, so your drive becomes fragmented, ie little bits everywhere.

Defragging groups everything together that's supposed to be together, so when you access the data, it's all in a row so to speak, therefore quicker to access.

I know you understood it already, just thought I'd give my perspective. :)
 
+1

Both great explanations

Regular defrags will keep everything neat and running good

Regular = Atleast Once a Month
 
It really does suck defragging larger drives. Any maintenance for that matter.

I created a partition my on 300Gb HDD when I first did my build and it seemed to take forever.
 
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Stoic Sentinel said:
While I'm defragging my new computer for the first time after all my installs, let me as the question: What exactly does "defragging" you computer do? I think it breaks up fragments and makes it easier to retrieve for the computer, I'm probably wrong, though. Your thoughts?
Click to expand...

I always think of defrag as similar to reorganizing a shelf or cupboard in which everything has been scattered about. Defrag puts fragmented files back together in order so that the HDD can access them without lags. So just as it will be faster to find your books from a neat shelf, defrag helps prevent slowdowns.

If you want the best defragger, check out Diskeeper2010. Its awesome! Runs automatically in the background, lets you run all your programs and best of all defrags in as less as 1% free space. Also this new version is supposed to prevent most of the fragmentation from occuring in the first place.
 
vhk12 said:
I always think of defrag as similar to reorganizing a shelf or cupboard in which everything has been scattered about. Defrag puts fragmented files back together in order so that the HDD can access them without lags. So just as it will be faster to find your books from a neat shelf, defrag helps prevent slowdowns.

If you want the best defragger, check out Diskeeper2010. Its awesome! Runs automatically in the background, lets you run all your programs and best of all defrags in as less as 1% free space. Also this new version is supposed to prevent most of the fragmentation from occuring in the first place.
Click to expand...

Yup^, but I use Defraggler, been using it for a while and I'm pretty satisfied with it, why fix something that ain't broke, eh?
 
I tried Defraggler and it kept saying my drive was still fragmented, like 24% right after a defrag. It wouldn't update for some reason.

Then I downloaded Auslogics and it said the drive was 4% fragmented. :confused:
 
Bodaggit23 said:
I tried Defraggler and it kept saying my drive was still fragmented, like 24% right after a defrag. It wouldn't update for some reason.

Then I downloaded Auslogics and it said the drive was 4% fragmented. :confused:
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That's strange, I've never had that problem, what do you use now? The default defrag program that came with Windows?
 
Yeah i just used Auslogicslast night and it only took 20 mins, but it says something about my drive still being 4% fragmented. are they the files that can't be moved?
 
anbo369 said:
Yeah i just used Auslogicslast night and it only took 20 mins, but it says something about my drive still being 4% fragmented. are they the files that can't be moved?
Click to expand...

Yeah some system files can't be defragged. If you run the drive as a slave and boot off another HD you can defrag it though, but it's more work than it's worth.
 
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