Disk deframention

Little House on Unaka | April 9, 2014 | don-o

[don-o]

My laptop suddenly was less responsive. I regularly run disc cleanup and defrag, using the built in Win 7 tools. On a whim, I installed Defraggler and it shows my HD 14% fragmented.

I was stuned.

[GeronL]

my fan is broke - I cannot afford to fix it - right now I am using a borrowed XBox

[rarestia]

If you’re still using Linux, there’s no need for defrag

SSD fixes that problem regardless of OS. One can get SSDs real cheap nowadays, and the performance increase is the most notable performance tweak available for machines since SATA became the norm for disks.

[Hillarys Gate Cult]

I’ve been using this for years and have no complaints;

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

May take a while on first run but you can also optimize. Much faster than Windows defrag. Just watch where you click and what you check when downloading. A full defrag and optimize only takes about 5 minutes. Defrag only takes about a minute.

[A_Tradition_Continues]

framentation=fragmentation

[don-o]

455 Gb

[Amendment10]

How full is your hard disk percentage wise?

[Moonman62]

Get yourself a SSD (Solid State Drive) and defregging will be a thing of the past.

I second that, and they seem to be rather affordable these days.

[don-o]

Good idea - I am due for a backup

[don-o]

“Defraggler” by Pirform.

That's what I am running now. Down to 13%

[taxcontrol]

Auslogics has a great defragmenter that is free. It moves system files to the front of the disk as well. Their registry cleaner is also free and can improved overall performance as well.

[GeronL]

I remember FraggleRock

never mind

[Starstruck]

This is a situation of much gravity. You have lost your gees.

[don-o]

How full is your hard disk percentage wise?

13

[Bikkuri]

ouch :/

[Billthedrill]

One can get SSDs real cheap nowadays...

Concur on the recommendation and yep, they've come way down. All my personal boxes have an SSD as a primary drive now. Better performance, lower power usage and heat. Not much of a downside there.

That said, they can have their own little quirks. I bought one of the Intel drives back in the "update your firmware, brick your drive" days. Ugly.

[GeronL]

someone needs to start a fundraiser for me

lol

[don-o]

It’s already running better.

[rarestia]

Most of the mfrs are real good with their firmware flashing software nowadays. As long as you use a boot disk to do the flash and don't flash a system drive while it's in use, it's almost impossible to brick an SSD.

However, when you DO brick an SSD, there's no hope for recovery. I bought 2 OCZ Agility 3 SSDs a few years ago, and I had massive problems with one of them for a long time. When I finally posted to their forums, they had me run diagnostics against the disk which revealed problems. I made a backup, blanked the disk, shipped it to them, and they sent me a replacement tout de suite. All around a good experience.

However, there are some very visible issues with S3 sleep and SSDs that many manufacturers are having trouble overcoming; or at least they were a couple years ago. I'm building a new gaming rig this weekend, and I've gone over to Samsung for my SSD. I hope I don't have any issues.

Samsung 840 EVO 120 GB SATA III on NewEgg for only $90! THAT'S a steal.

[Amendment10]

Only 13%!

That’s good news. That’s just one less check that you have to consider to keep your drive in good shape.

[FredZarguna]

Windows optimizes the disk to improve program load times. Defragmenting with tools other than Windows® is generally not recommended unless they have a certification approval sticker. Even then, I'd be very surprised if fragmentation is the cause of the performance problem.

I'd recommend downloading this first: Seatools for Windows [or some other disk diagnostic tool.] Check for S.M.A.R.T. or other errors on the disk.

As other have observed, the best thing you can do is get an SSD.