How often do you defrag?

[upsidedownwalrus]

Until quite recently my hex life was really rather poor. Slow, boring, unresponsive. I didn't know quite what the problem was, until a friend suggested I had a good defrag. Now I try to have one at least once a week, it really tends to sort things out...

See poll

 

[Jangla]

I have OO Defrag sat in the background so it defrags small chunks on the fly and behind the scenes - keeps things in top top shape and then I can do a massive re-org once every few months. You can guarantee the instant you set off on a defag mission, you need to use the machine urgently and it's tied up all it's processing power with the disk reorganisation.

 

[Fruitloop]

On windows machines I just zap them every 3-4 months and reinstall.

 

[MarkMark]

This really aught to be in the rude forum

 

[jæd]

Unix style os don't require it. So I don't. Unless fsck wants to.

 

[marty21]

every couple of months i think

 

[Kameron]

On windows machines I just zap them every 3-4 months and reinstall.

Innit, I relay the Ghost every six months.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

Never.

 

[spudulike]

Don't need to (Linux)

 

[FridgeMagnet]

I think we need a new poll option.

 

[DaveCinzano]

never mind the defrag, what about fragging?

 

[Sunspots]

I 'defrag' and also run 'scan disk' every two or three months.

I'd do it more often, but it takes several hours to do each.

If I'm going to run either of them, I'll run it overnight. Trouble is, I'll often get up in the morning to find that the computer's either completely frozen up midway through, or keeps going 'round in circles displaying a message to the effect of 'Restarting process because files have changed since scanning began'. Or something.

PS: what's the difference between 'defrag' and 'scan disk'?

 

[upsidedownwalrus]

Don't need to (Linux)

Does Linux eliminate the need for such things?

Hmm... Might have to try it out...

 

[upsidedownwalrus]

PS: what's the difference between 'defrag' and 'scan disk'?

Is scan disk the thing that gets rid of rubbish files for you, thus creating lots of free space, every now and then?

I think defrag keeps things but moves them closer together, while scan disk gets rid of things entirely. I might, of course, be wrong about that...

 

[spudulike]

keeps going 'round in circles displaying a message to the effect of 'Restarting process because files have changed since scanning began'. Or something.

If you start your PC in "safe mode" and turn off screen saver, you should find that doesn't happen.

 

[ICB]

I 'defrag' and also run 'scan disk' every two or three months.

I'd do it more often, but it takes several hours to do each.

PS: what's the difference between 'defrag' and 'scan disk'?

More often you do it the quicker it runs cos the less it has to sort out.

Scan disk checks your disks for errors and converts any problem areas into files so that you can open them with an editor to see what they were. Defrag reorganises your disk so that a single file is stored in a single contiguous area on the disk, rather than spread around in bits (fragments).

Is scan disk the thing that gets rid of rubbish files for you, thus creating lots of free space, every now and then?

That's Disk Cleanup, a good thing to do before you run defrag.

To answer the question: depends on the system and what I've been doing with it, one gets a sense for when things need sorting out.

 

[jæd]

Does Linux eliminate the need for such things?

Hmm... Might have to try it out...

Linux is based on Unix. OS X is based on Unix. Only primitive os' like Xp need defragging.

 

[alsoknownas]

Come on, this one's been done to death

http://www.urban75.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=135676








Oh, I see... my mistake

 

[Sunspots]

Ta ICB and Renegade Dog for explaining the difference!

If you start your PC in "safe mode" and turn off screen saver, you should find that doesn't happen.

Ta spudulike, I'll give that a go.

(Is it: Press 'F8' when booting up? )

 

[spudulike]

Does Linux eliminate the need for such things?

Yes. most installations give you a choice of filesystem to use. They don't need defragging. Choose either ext3 or reiserfs - both are "journalling" filesystems so if you have a power cut, it has a very good chance of reparing very quickly when you power up.

Hmm... Might have to try it out...

I recommend SimplyMEPIS which you can download and burn to a CD. Then tell you PC to boot from CD and you can try it without touching your hard drive. It obviously runs slow as it heavily compressed. A good idea to use it whenever you want to shop of bank online. If you like it, there is an "INSTALL ME" icon onthe desktop to put it on hard drive.

 

[spudulike]

(Is it: Press 'F8' when booting up? )

I think so. On my daughter's PC she installed "tweakui" which gives you an icon in the control panel. There's a tab where you can tell the PC what to do when it "boots".

 

[jæd]

I recommend SimplyMEPIS which you can download and burn to a CD. Then tell you PC to boot from CD and you can try it without touching your hard drive. It obviously runs slow as it heavily compressed. A good idea to use it whenever you want to shop of bank online. If you like it, there is an "INSTALL ME" icon onthe desktop to put it on hard drive.

I'd go for Ubuntu. Same a Mepis but uses Gnome. Very easy to use and uses the apt system for intalling most programs/applications.

Ie, to install firefox (but it comes with it anyway):

sudo apt-get mozilla-firefox

To update firefox to the latest version:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade mozilla-firefox

To update the os when the next version of ubuntu comes out

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Or you can use Synaptic - a nice gui application if the above is too much typing.

 

[Crispy]

As an aside, I wouldn't even dream of telling a *nix newbie to use the CLI first.

Anyway, I'm pretty much tied to windows by the apps I need to use, but I have quite an advanced strategy for my drives, involving a bunch of partitions, mounted back to regular folders on C: I have one partition for the swapfile and hiberfil.sys, one for Photoshop scratch, one for Program Files, one for My Documents and one called Media (which links back to My Music, My Videos and My Pictures) - That's all on 2 physical drives.

The pagefile and scratch disk partitions don't need defragging. Program Files only rarely. Videos Music and Pictures are fragmented to hell and back, what with constant downloading/burning to disk, but I'm never rushing to get quick access to them anyway. C: Gets adefrag every couple of months.

 

[stdPikachu]

Does Linux eliminate the need for such things?

More or less. Most filesystems you get in the UNIX world are highly resistant to fragmentation (or sometimes they're designed to fragment in such a way as to not impede performance), and many re-organise themsevles when idle. FAT32 and NTFS are usually regarded as rather quaintly stone-aged by people who use fs's like Reiser, XFS and JFS. Not sure how NTFS compares performance-wise to modern *nix filesystems, but last I heard XFS was pretty much the fastest thing available.

 

[jayeola]

Another Linux bod. No spyware, anti-virus, or drgragging stuff needed.

 

[scott_forester]

I used to have a customer who defragged the client application we supplied them every night, causing all sorts of problems for us. He insisted that it made the system work better, even though it was a client?

Oh users - don't you just love em?

 

[ecadre]

I'm pretty much tied to windows by the apps I need to use

That's funny, I'd say exactly the same thing about Linux.

 

[ecadre]

Another Linux user here. Defragging is so last century

 

[gentlegreen]

Another Linux bod. No spyware, anti-virus, or drgragging stuff needed.

Windows/IE user who doesn't click on random crap so therefore no spyware or antivirus needed

.

 

[spudulike]

Windows/IE user who doesn't click on random crap so therefore no spyware or antivirus needed

Search for "without user intervention" on this page from Microsoft. Even if you think the whole Internet is crap and never click on anything you may well be in danger unless your PC came with SP2