defraging

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10 Dec 2012
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327
Location
leicester
hi their a friend of mine (rich and doesnt know what hes doing) has a rig with 10 hdds in and for a while now it has been slow,ive told him to defrag the hdds but he said that it deletes all the files and doesnt make any speed difference (i know it doesnt delete files).how much of a difference would it make if he de fragged it and show him this thread as he doesnt belive me that it makes a difference
 
Not something you should do all the time, but when i do i use defraggler if your HDD is badly defragged it will make a big difference.
 
They don't delete files, they just move 'em about a bit in an attempt to reduce access times. SSDs should never be defragged.

I use Defraggler, the same as linwelin - free and seems to do a good job. The built in Windows one is definitely alright if you/he don't/doesn't want to install a different one.

Your pal doesn't have to take my/our word for it though, there'll no doubt be plenty of info out there on defragging and what the benefits are.

Maybe his system might benefit from a good registry cleaner, personally I quite like Tune-up Utilities, free for a month.


Edit: Some stuff about defragging here http://computer.howstuffworks.com/question548.htm
 
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Not something you should do all the time, but when i do i use defraggler if your HDD is badly defragged it will make a big difference.

This, it can make a big differencem as all it does it moves files into order so windows can find them faster.
 
hes running 7 but he had the auto defrag off.ive cleaned all his disks up and it helped a fair bit they are all hdd because again he reckons ssds are a waste of time (sigh!)
 
If the HDD supports NCQ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Command_Queuing) then performance of de-fragmented file access won't suffer as badly as older HDD's.

My view defrag is worth running after new applications are installed, or you've copied a lot of data that won't be changing for a while.

However if a HDD is having a lot of constant data changes, then especially with NCQ it's normally not worth the extra HDD wear and risk to any data.
 
+1 on Defraggler.
Worth doing now and then. I used to do mine probably once a year, not anymore due to having an SSD.
 
1st: Educate your friend (if he isn't know it all) on what disk defragging does.
2nd: Get him to do the disk cleanup before defragging, and ditching all the temporary internet files as those vastly increase the defrag time if not deleted first.
3rd: Run defrag and leave to complete.
4th: Restart machine
5th: Be happy at result.
6th: Don't assume that the degradation in performance is due to the disks being fragmented. Further investigation is needed to determine the route cause.

With point 6 in mind... what exactly are you defining as slow? What are the symptoms?
 
well all i know is that they are wd caviar black 2 tbs and the system specs are
i5 3570k
16gb 1600mhz ram
asus z77 sabertooth mobo
gigabyte 7950
xfx 1000w psu
10 x wd cav black 2tb
 
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