not help, just curious

[*Ant*]

What actually happens when you defrag your hard-drive, if you defrag'ed once a week would it shorten it's life span compared to say if you defrag'ed once a month?

[Si...]

What actually happens when you defrag your hard-drive,

DEFRAG or Disk Defragmenter is a program included with most versions of the MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows operating systems since MS-DOS 5.0, ca 1989. Defrag.exe defragments a file system such as a hard drive.

 

Disk optimization is, briefly, a method of optimizing the efficiency of disk caching to minimize head travel and maximize effective speed:

 

1. Move all the index or directory information to one spot. Move this spot into the center of the data, e.g. one third of the way in, so that head travel to data is halved compared to having directory information at the front.

 

2. Cluster files around the directory area.

 

3. Optionally: Move infrequently used files further from the directory area.

 

4. Optionally: Obey a user provided table of file descriptions to emphasize or ignore.

 

5. While moving files around, be sure that all are contiguous (defragmentation).

 

 

 

if you defrag'ed once a week would it shorten it's life span compared to say if you defrag'ed once a month?

 

You shouldn`t need to defrag more than once a month, and I don`t think it shortens the drives life span, probably better letting someone with more knowledge answer that one

[Tog]

Fast modern drives used by most non gaming 'punters' probably do not need a defrag, ever.

Commercial database drives with big chunks of data being apended will show a performace increase and are probably set to self defrag regular like.

As for wear? Well after the defrag the drive will be doing less to find the data, but the process of the defrag is very intensive, therefore probably not much in it wearwise.

I used to fix big old floppy drives (8"!) and it did make a huge difference if the file were not 'contiguous'.

[corydoras]

Fast modern drives used by most non gaming 'punters' probably do not need a defrag, ever.

Commercial database drives with big chunks of data being apended will show a performace increase and are probably set to self defrag regular like.

As for wear? Well after the defrag the drive will be doing less to find the data, but the process of the defrag is very intensive, therefore probably not much in it wearwise.

I used to fix big old floppy drives (8"!) and it did make a huge difference if the file were not 'contiguous'.

I would agree with all of the above apart from the bit about 'big commercial database drives' whatever they may be. Most BIG databases on a BIG computer will be stored on SCSI disks, the computer hosting the DB will run some version of UNIX and the disks will be configured as RAW devices. They don't even have a file system on them, no files, nothing to defragment.

[melpen]

would agree with all of the above apart from the bit about 'big commercial database drives' whatever they may be. Most BIG databases on a BIG computer will be stored on SCSI disks, the computer hosting the DB will run some version of UNIX and the disks will be configured as RAW devices. They don't even have a file system on them, no files, nothing to defragment.

 

 

SCSI old but reliable technology, now were using cascading optical drives, Terrabites not gigabites, defragging these is just not worth it, takes to long.