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Does it stil make much difference, now that we have much faster and larger HDDs? Generally I find if disk performance is getting too slow, it's probably because of too little free space, and the solution is to buy a new HDD.

7 Answers 7

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It is still relevant, but since the release of Vista, Windows has automatically defragged your hard drive when the computer was sitting idle. If you leave your computer idle for long periods, this is no longer something which must be done manually.

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  • Since Vista I think also it is set up to run a scheduled defrag once a week or something.
    – Svish
    Jul 16, 2009 at 8:09
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    What doesn't make sense for me is if it automatically does it why does it also schedule it? Especially as the default time is 1am when your computer is likely to be idle anyway and, apparently, automatically defragging. Oct 12, 2009 at 11:46
  • @JonHopkins I think it makes sense. Chances of you doing real definite work is unlikely at 1am. Most people turn off their computer when not in use. If you happen to have the computer running at 1am, it'll force the computer to defrag whether you're idle or not.
    – ninjaneer
    Sep 2, 2012 at 23:57
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It's not relevant on SSDs, which are hardly (if at all) affected by defragmentation (no read-heads to be moved around). And even more: SSDs have a much more limited number of times each part of the "disk" can be written to ("write endurance"; What is the lifespan of an SSD drive?), so especially for cheap SSDs it's best to use the whole disk, rather than keep using the same parts over and over again by running defragmentation tools.

For those who've partitioned their hard drive: didn't that introduce a huge fragmentation?

And though the question is tagged "windows", for those who get here given the generic title: it is not relevant for each file system. Like for a Mac (emphasis mine):

You probably won't need to optimize at all if you use Mac OS X. Here's why:

  • Hard disk capacity is generally much greater now than a few years ago. With more free space available, the file system doesn't need to fill up every "nook and cranny." Mac OS Extended formatting (HFS Plus) avoids reusing space from deleted files as much as possible, to avoid prematurely filling small areas of recently-freed space.

  • Mac OS X 10.2 and later includes delayed allocation for Mac OS X Extended-formatted volumes. This allows a number of small allocations to be combined into a single large allocation in one area of the disk.

  • Fragmentation was often caused by continually appending data to existing files, especially with resource forks. With faster hard drives and better caching, as well as the new application packaging format, many applications simply rewrite the entire file each time. Mac OS X 10.3 Panther can also automatically defragment such slow-growing files. This process is sometimes known as "Hot-File-Adaptive-Clustering."

  • Aggressive read-ahead and write-behind caching means that minor fragmentation has less effect on perceived system performance.

[..]

There is also a chance that one of the files placed in the "hot band" for rapid reads during system startup might be moved during defragmentation, which would decrease performance.

Of course, the latter would not occur when using a Defrag utility that is included with the operating system.

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Yes.

On my friend's PC (XP, NTFS, 80GB HD, ~750MB free), the 700MB pagefile was in 11,000 fragments, and the MFT was in 40 fragments. I cleaned up the hard drive, defragmented, and rebooted, and the difference was very noticeable.

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    I thought the standard trick for pagefiles was to set them to a fixed size (e.g. minimum 2048MB maximum 2048MB). Do it early and you never have to worry about it fragmenting.
    – John Fouhy
    Jul 16, 2009 at 0:25
  • My friend isn't the most "computer literate", if you know what I mean
    – zildjohn01
    Jul 16, 2009 at 15:50
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It matters, but in Vista and Win7, it should be happening automatically as long as your machine has idle time.

Lots of good info.

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  • Only so long as you leave your computer on 24 hours a day. By default, it attempts to defrag at 1:00 AM. Many people turn their computers off when they are done using them for the day, or set their computers to go to sleep. Would have been nice if Microsoft had chosen a realistic approach rather than just scheduling defrags for 1:00 AM. Jul 30, 2009 at 16:12
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The speed brought by defrag is especially visible on slower hdds, like those on laptops.

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I think it's still relevant. I have a C2Duo/2Gb/250Gbx2 setup, and even with the mirrored "small" drives, defragging seems to help tremendously with startup and program load times.

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I would say it still makes sense - specially on hard drives that get a lot of file activities. I run MyDefrag at work to keep my hard drive from getting too fragmented, since at work I usually work on several revision depots that can have thousands of file changes in one day - keeping it defragged really helps on open read performance of the bigger art files I work with, but also on the speed of my text searches.

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