I have found that when I try to only defrag my USB external drive, Windows decides to defrag the main drive too. I select only the external USB drive to defrag, but after a little while, it stops spinning, and yet Windows says that it is still defragging. It's kind of annoying, because I write to that drive all day every day, and hardly ever write to the main drive, so therefore, have no need to defrag it. Windows!
Posted by: Carl R. Goodwin at January 18, 2008 6:32 PM
If it ever comes down to data recovery, then defragged files are much more likely to be recovered. Some products like PerfectDisk allow defragging without opimization.
Posted by: Packrat1947 at January 18, 2008 8:35 PM
I run a small free utility on my system called "IOBit smartdefrag" which runs automatically in the background and keeps my main drive up to speed. As Linux looks after it's own drives in it's own way as standard I though it was strange that Windows had nothing similar and the hard drives always degenerated the files and fragmentation.
I personally would have belived that todays massive hard drives wouldn't suffer so much clogging of its file system, but then all the tiny files for windows and many programs are on my C Drive after all...!
(I always double and triple check comments and independent reviews before using freeware
Check this out -
http://www.iobit.com/iobitsmartdefrag.html >>
Posted by: Adrian Barrett at January 21, 2008 10:09 AM
Hi,
I read that laptop external drives don't won't well with Vista. Is this true? Secondly, what external drives (desktop or laptop) do you recommend? I am trying to choose between the Western Digital My Book Edition 500GB ($129.99 at Costco or the Seagate Pro Agent 750GB ($199 at Costco). Please help.
Thanks,
Danny.
Posted by: danny at February 5, 2008 4:00 PM
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
I've not heard that. I'd expect 'em to be fine on Vista, XP
whatever.
As for brands ... that tends to change from year to year. I
have two Maxtors I'm quite happy with, and two Western
Digitals. The WDs are the first time I've had one fail
within a short time, though. It was recoverable (using
SpinRite), and the drive is still in use and appears solid.
Posted by: Leo A. Notenboom at February 6, 2008 9:26 AM
Nice article Leo. I am wondering about the comment "when it gets too full". Well, how is this determined? Exactly what is too full? And how will one be notified of this status? About 8 years ago, back when recordable CD drives were still around $450 or so and media was expensive, I did not have the means to back up a secondary storage drive that I had filled to around 80% capacity. It started having problems reading data, and crashed with no recovery option, unless I wanted to spend $1500 (a lot of greenbacks in those days). As it is now, I keep my secondary disk(s) at around 50% storage capacity, but this is a layman's approach. I have not been able to find any info on external or secondary disk storage recommended limits, so I thought I'd ask you you know what they are or what the generally accepted limits are?
Posted by: Drew Phillips at July 6, 2008 5:02 PM
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
Unfortunately what "too full" means depends *entirely* on
how you use the drive - there's no single answer. Could be
OK to be at exactly 100% capacity, could be bad to have if
only 50% empty.
How will you know? Something that attempts to use the drive
will fail because there's not enough room to do whatever it
wants to do. Perhaps you can't backup. Perhaps you can't
save a file. Perhaps defrag doesn't complete like you want
it to. Perhaps many other things.
Sorry there's really no better answer or reecommendation.
I have a 500g Seagate. Last night i attempted to run a back up [i use Ghost] and it said my drive was full. So when i checked 'properties' indeed, it almost was. So i deleted A LOT of the older back-ups, ranging from 37-41gig each, and still, it said there wasn't enough room.
Again, i checked the properties, and the available volume had not changed. So, now i tried 'disk cleanup'. It emptied the recycle bin, i had no idea the ext. drive had one ... but now it's been working on deleting the 'compressed files' [again, i didnt know they were there] but it's been HOURS and not much change. [the progress bar on the clean up window is only at 1 bar after more than 3 hrs.]
Is this normal?
I've also attempted a 'defrag' but again, windows said there is not enough room to do so. [i'm running XP home]
It does seem some utilities do not work the same on an external drive.
Thanks,
Terese
Posted by: Terese at October 15, 2008 11:51 AM
I regularly defragment my external Western Digital hard disk as I do daily synchronization and the files are constantly being moved and deleted as stated above from Leo.
I have a found a free open source application that defrags external hard disks with ease. Doing a defrag simultaneously as I am typing this actually.
Works fine in Windows XP and should work on anything, it's a very robust application.
Can download from over here:
http://www.anonsolutions.com/Free-Downloads/
Then click on dfsetup115.zip
Just inzip and enjoy ;)
Posted by: Bruno at December 13, 2009 7:17 PM
You should never vacuum your PC unless you want to fry it.
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I have found that when I try to only defrag my USB external drive, Windows decides to defrag the main drive too. I select only the external USB drive to defrag, but after a little while, it stops spinning, and yet Windows says that it is still defragging. It's kind of annoying, because I write to that drive all day every day, and hardly ever write to the main drive, so therefore, have no need to defrag it. Windows!
Posted by: Carl R. Goodwin at January 18, 2008 6:32 PMIf it ever comes down to data recovery, then defragged files are much more likely to be recovered. Some products like PerfectDisk allow defragging without opimization.
Posted by: Packrat1947 at January 18, 2008 8:35 PMI run a small free utility on my system called "IOBit smartdefrag" which runs automatically in the background and keeps my main drive up to speed. As Linux looks after it's own drives in it's own way as standard I though it was strange that Windows had nothing similar and the hard drives always degenerated the files and fragmentation.
I personally would have belived that todays massive hard drives wouldn't suffer so much clogging of its file system, but then all the tiny files for windows and many programs are on my C Drive after all...!
(I always double and triple check comments and independent reviews before using freeware
Check this out -
Posted by: Adrian Barrett at January 21, 2008 10:09 AMhttp://www.iobit.com/iobitsmartdefrag.html >>
Hi,
I read that laptop external drives don't won't well with Vista. Is this true? Secondly, what external drives (desktop or laptop) do you recommend? I am trying to choose between the Western Digital My Book Edition 500GB ($129.99 at Costco or the Seagate Pro Agent 750GB ($199 at Costco). Please help.
Thanks,
Posted by: danny at February 5, 2008 4:00 PMDanny.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
I've not heard that. I'd expect 'em to be fine on Vista, XP
whatever.
As for brands ... that tends to change from year to year. I
have two Maxtors I'm quite happy with, and two Western
Digitals. The WDs are the first time I've had one fail
within a short time, though. It was recoverable (using
SpinRite), and the drive is still in use and appears solid.
Leo
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (MingW32)
iD8DBQFHqe3gCMEe9B/8oqERAkcfAJsGppvdwy/9LFlvpKX0A0KH90BMQQCfanQW
Posted by: Leo A. Notenboom at February 6, 2008 9:26 AMaCa3CbkJv2Gv8dZbzxVbW1E=
=qq1c
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Nice article Leo. I am wondering about the comment "when it gets too full". Well, how is this determined? Exactly what is too full? And how will one be notified of this status? About 8 years ago, back when recordable CD drives were still around $450 or so and media was expensive, I did not have the means to back up a secondary storage drive that I had filled to around 80% capacity. It started having problems reading data, and crashed with no recovery option, unless I wanted to spend $1500 (a lot of greenbacks in those days). As it is now, I keep my secondary disk(s) at around 50% storage capacity, but this is a layman's approach. I have not been able to find any info on external or secondary disk storage recommended limits, so I thought I'd ask you you know what they are or what the generally accepted limits are?
Posted by: Drew Phillips at July 6, 2008 5:02 PM-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
Unfortunately what "too full" means depends *entirely* on
how you use the drive - there's no single answer. Could be
OK to be at exactly 100% capacity, could be bad to have if
only 50% empty.
How will you know? Something that attempts to use the drive
will fail because there's not enough room to do whatever it
wants to do. Perhaps you can't backup. Perhaps you can't
save a file. Perhaps defrag doesn't complete like you want
it to. Perhaps many other things.
Sorry there's really no better answer or reecommendation.
Leo
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (MingW32)
iD8DBQFIc/DdCMEe9B/8oqERAldiAJ0YImS3dPpZANZ7Qqwv44ZviosNXQCeJwTF
Posted by: Leo at July 8, 2008 3:57 PMGDLNfxQ93VgzLTb7QvwFoy0=
=4qqO
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
I have a 500g Seagate. Last night i attempted to run a back up [i use Ghost] and it said my drive was full. So when i checked 'properties' indeed, it almost was. So i deleted A LOT of the older back-ups, ranging from 37-41gig each, and still, it said there wasn't enough room.
Again, i checked the properties, and the available volume had not changed. So, now i tried 'disk cleanup'. It emptied the recycle bin, i had no idea the ext. drive had one ... but now it's been working on deleting the 'compressed files' [again, i didnt know they were there] but it's been HOURS and not much change. [the progress bar on the clean up window is only at 1 bar after more than 3 hrs.]
Is this normal?
I've also attempted a 'defrag' but again, windows said there is not enough room to do so. [i'm running XP home]
It does seem some utilities do not work the same on an external drive.
Thanks,
Terese
Posted by: Terese at October 15, 2008 11:51 AMI regularly defragment my external Western Digital hard disk as I do daily synchronization and the files are constantly being moved and deleted as stated above from Leo.
I have a found a free open source application that defrags external hard disks with ease. Doing a defrag simultaneously as I am typing this actually.
Works fine in Windows XP and should work on anything, it's a very robust application.
Can download from over here:
http://www.anonsolutions.com/Free-Downloads/
Then click on dfsetup115.zip
Just inzip and enjoy ;)
Posted by: Bruno at December 13, 2009 7:17 PMYou should never vacuum your PC unless you want to fry it.
Posted by: Tiff at September 15, 2011 11:58 PMTo post a comment on "Should I maintain my external drive the same way I do my internal?", please return to that article's main page.