Defrag

[HillyHugger]

Should I defrag my external drives ? Music , films etc . I chop & change them a lot

[Ethel]

Yes

[HillyHugger]

Ta

[vascop]

XP will tell you if it's worth doing before you actually do it.
Go to 'my computer' right click on the disk,choose 'properties' and then 'tools' and then 'defragment now' and then 'analyse'.
This will tell you if it's worth defragmenting or not.

[markoza]

You can defrag them if they are fragmented. Use a safe defrag utility like Diskeeper '09 which is fast and efficient, and does not grind away at the drive for longer than necessary. Run a disk cleanup and then run Diskeeper to avoid defragging temp files. You can grab free trial versions of Diskeeper from their website.
BTW, it's not a good idea to use the external drive as you would use an internal IDE/SATA drive. Those things are meant mostly for archiving/backups and not continuous long term use. They can begin to run hot quite quickly.