Defragmentation is key to system performance. A heavily defragmented disk that is near capacity will decrease the system performance significantly. When you go to write a large file it will take a lot longer because the head will have to move to several places on the disk to find free space to span the large file over. Lots of times you could have a large file spanned over several physical platters in the drive it self causing longer waits for disk operations. Also it is a lot more stressful on the disk itself to constantly be seeking back and forth to different physical areas for data when it could just read continuously from one area of the platter. Your data is actually more prone to error being fragmented than contiguous.
Defragging is a safe operation and contiguous file systems are crucial to maintaining disk and system performance. You don't have to do it at boot or even once a week. You should do it each time you make a significant change to the file system (installed a big program, deleted large amounts of files, etc). -----Original Message----- From: Bagotronix Tech Support [mailto:techsupport@;bagotronix.com] Sent: Tuesday, November 12, 2002 2:58 PM To: Protel EDA Forum Subject: Re: [PEDA] Antivirus Software & Memory Issues While we're on the subject, I don't bother with defrag. It is mostly a waste of time and puts your data at risk while the defragging operation is in process. I know some people who have their PCs set up to automatically defrag each time they boot up. I guess they don't care for quick booting! * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * To post a message: mailto:proteledaforum@;techservinc.com * * To leave this list visit: * http://www.techservinc.com/protelusers/leave.html * * Contact the list manager: * mailto:ForumAdministrator@;TechServInc.com * * Forum Guidelines Rules: * http://www.techservinc.com/protelusers/forumrules.html * * Browse or Search previous postings: * http://www.mail-archive.com/proteledaforum@;techservinc.com * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
