defrag on vista

[mandimoo]

sad i know, but i used to quite like watching the animations of the defragging, where you saw the blue sectors and red sectors and white sectors changing. can i look at this whilst defragging on vista?

[Ethel]

No you can't - and it annoys many people that Vista have removed the old defrag interface.

You could try another defrag tool - there are plenty of free ones about. Here is one:

http://www.defraggler.com/

[bimbim]

Or http://www.auslogics.com/disk-defrag

[fo3nix]

Don't bother defragging.

You don't need to.

It's a waste of your time.

[figure]

Hey Fo3nix - is it also a waste of time defragging XP? If so why? Thanks. x

[ACtheTROLL]

oh heck .... disagreeing again

misconception 1
waste of time/don't need to

With NTFS it's not as big a problem as it was with fat16 & 32 but if fragmentation gets over 25% (ish) you will see a difference ... the allocation database and disc mechanism is still the same as it's allways been and so it does have to work overtime to keep it all together when segments are all over the place.

Misconception 2
It was removed from vista

actually ... (because it IS important) ... rather than removing it, it was integrated INTO vista more tightly than before ....
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/942092/en-us
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/939039/en-us
(see manual defrag)
thinking - so you don't have to! ;-) and so it's now a constant process which runs whenever it sees a lull in useage....
(It's actually a "light" version of paragon's offering)
I agree it was strangely hypnotic to look at .... (sad?)
a bought version will optimise using fancy methods and algorythms ... but unless you are a power user ... you won't see much difference.
(if you look in the comp mags ... there is often a free version knocking about)

figure ... no it's not - yes you should still

[fo3nix]

It's still very much a required process.

However, on both XP and Vista (and other OSs too), it can be made (or does by default) to run in the background whenever the machine is idle. If it does this, then it means you have to manually run it less often.

However, there are those that will tell people to run it every week or so, usually coming from something they've read relating to FAT16/32 filesystems on older Windows machines, with much lower density hard drives.

This is a total waste of time, in that it doesn't need doing. Once a month, sure, go for it if you want to. Likewise if you spend a lot of time on the PC making lots of small files, or processing huge files.

But for the average user, who browses online, emails and writes the occasional letter, defraging on XP or later only need be done every few months.

This mentality of "must keep my PC running smoothly" is very much a Windows mentality; you won't find it half as much in other OS corners, like GNU/Linux or Mac OS X.