How do I defragment my new hard disk?

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xcellant

I defrag every week, and over time, the "blue sections" become more coherent. I do it after I run all my spyware programs, and re-arrange files. Usually on a lazy Sunday afternoon when the Lions are on (and I can take a nap!) LOL

Whose Lions are they please?..What are they ON?
etc..Here in the UK we never see lions except in the Zoos..

When you really get fed up with defragging (which doesn't take long with a big drive) pop over to
http://www.ashampoo.com/
and blow $13 on Magical Defrag. Does it while your computer is idle. No noticeable effect on other tasks. Bonus: once you buy a product and get on their list you'll get offers for their other products (which I think are exceptionally good) at reduced prices. So don't buy everything the first time you visit.

This article is great! Not my main problem, but soon would be an issue!
Thank you,
Sandy

Not too many years ago, PC World magazine had a small article about some benchmark testing performed in their labs, done both before and after the HDD's were defragmented. Their findings were that there was very little (if any) improvement in performance after the drives were defragmented.
They would mention it in subsequent articles, but I don't recall seeing it very recently. Maybe the findings were too heretical (like when it was first suggested to the medical community that washing hands prior to surgery could increase the success rate of patients' recovery).

Personally I use the FREE "Contig": http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/contig.mspx program from Sysinternals for the occasional defragmenting of separate directories/sub-directories, basically because it allows users to defragment a single directory or even a single file (in fact, it's the first program that I've seen that is able to do that, and so far the only one); I mainly use it in an "automated" way, i.e. with the use of batch-files.

But for the so-called "on-the-fly" defragmentation, I use an also FREE "Buzzsaw" program: http://www.dirms.com/home/docs/buzzsaw.asp program from DirMS site (here's also a link to its page at Download.com: http://www.download.com/3000-2094-10198524.html ); this one is a GUI program and it monitors the hard-disk usage level and waits one minute before attempting to defragment a newly fragmented file, and additionally, it doesn't defragment the file untill the hard-disk's usage is less than 5% for some time (I think that's 1 minute or so), however, I don't really like the newer "service versions" of the program that additionally require (free) registration. That's why I use an outdated non-service version 2.0.0.2, that still works perfectly fine.

P.S. -- And by the way, there is also another defrag-program from the same site/author as Buzzsaw, a CLI program called "Dirms": http://www.dirms.com/home/docs/dirms1.asp , which is same as "Contig" an "on-demand" type of defragmenter; this one first offers users to do a free space evaluation, then defragment and/or move the files to the front of the drive (optionally accordingly to the files' modification-dates), and can additionally also compact them, i.e. it minimizes the small spaces between the physical file-locations of files as stored on hard-disk.

________

best regards,
Ivan Tadej, Slovenia
http://tadej-ivan.50webs.com/

Shouldn't one check their disk with "chkdsk" before defragmenting their hard drive?
A third way to run the defrag.exe program is to open Windows Explorer, right click on the drive that one wishes to defragment, e.g. (C:), left click "Properties" in the context menu, left click the "Tools" tab and then in the "Error-checking" box, click on "Check Now". One has the options of just a disk check, or a repair, or both the next time the computer re-boots.

To clarify my previous post: I meant to explain the third way to DEFRAG a Win XP computer. I inadvertently used the instructions on how to use CHKDSK. One can still use this Property Dialog to defragment the hard drive, too. Sorry, it's been a l...o...n...g holiday.

An excellent "defrag program " is PerfectDisk by Raxco.I have tested this program for sometime now and it appears to work quite well,also defrags system files & boot files...

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