Vista and Defragging question

[FritzDaKat]

Ok, so my last system ran on 98se and I've worked with XP as well, and in both cases I've come to learn that defragging is something you generally let your PC do while you sleep(Or for folks like me with 4 hard drives, what you do on weekends out of town).
 But much to my suprise, after cleaning out 20+ gig's of porn and movies and "other files" recently burned to DVD's I decided it was time to scandisk / defag my new-ish Vista system. After a couple hours of waiting, I got bored so I dared click on the
"How does disk defragmenter help" button in the defrag window and much to my suprise I read the following, "You can still use your computer during the defragmentation process."
Granted, I doubt this means it would be a good idea to hop on Xfire and join in a game. I also assume that by using my system I'm extending the overall time it will take to defrag the system but I'm really wondering if using the system during defragmentation is going to have an adverse affect on the degree of defragmentation or if it's just going to make it take longer. Anyone know?

[Dr.Jeckyl]

Depending on how powerful your system is you can do just about anything if you don't mind about 80% reduction in system resources. I personally wouldn't play games just for that reason. But everyday browsing and computer use should have no effect on defragging, as long as your tasks don't include a lot, and I mean A LOT of file changes. Batch photo editing, downloading mass amounts of files at once, etc... The defrag utility is pretty smart and most likely will only move files it can at that time, if not it will skip it.

Also a thing to remember is that the utility that comes with Windows isn't always the best. Search for free alternatives.

http://www.iobit.com/iobitsmartdefrag.html?Str=download

I've used this one with good success.

[FritzDaKat]

675 Gb approximate drive space, 14 hrs gone by and much like the Energizer Bunny, "It's still going". This is what I get for relying on Defrag's judgment of just how "fragged up" my drives were after reading how Vista handles defragging "quietly in the background while your system is idle" Last time I wait the 5 months it took to suggest defragging my disks.

[Autoload]

Ok, so my last system ran on 98se and I've worked with XP as well, and in both cases I've come to learn that defragging is something you generally let your PC do while you sleep(Or for folks like me with 4 hard drives, what you do on weekends out of town).
 But much to my suprise, after cleaning out 20+ gig's of porn and movies and "other files" recently burned to DVD's I decided it was time to scandisk / defag my new-ish Vista system. After a couple hours of waiting, I got bored so I dared click on the
"How does disk defragmenter help" button in the defrag window and much to my suprise I read the following, "You can still use your computer during the defragmentation process."
Granted, I doubt this means it would be a good idea to hop on Xfire and join in a game. I also assume that by using my system I'm extending the overall time it will take to defrag the system but I'm really wondering if using the system during defragmentation is going to have an adverse affect on the degree of defragmentation or if it's just going to make it take longer. Anyone know?

As mentioned you will see performance hit on gaming, but can safely do email, browse the web, online banking etc.. while a defrag is running.

The more important question here is how you set yourself up with so many internal drives.  There is no valid reason to have that much internal hard drive space for file storage in my opinion.  A much better and productive way for data storage is with networked storage devices.  Such devices are inexpensive and their maintenance does not carry overhead on the local PC connected to them.  Ethernet is best to connect, but depending on your needs for data transfer speeds, USB is a less expensive option.

[FritzDaKat]

The more important question here is how you set yourself up with so many internal drives.  There is no valid reason to have that much internal hard drive space for file storage in my opinion. 

3 of the drives are internal, one is an external usb drive (200 Gb/ storage and saved stuff from old PC). Inside drives, #1 (120 Gb) Used for OS and most Apps. #2 (300 Gb sata) Used for storage and due to running out of room on the other drives, some games and apps but I keep that to a minimum, usualy just older games I like to play now and then like GTA vc. #3 74 Gb WD Raptor, Games, nothing more, nothing less.

Reason? I always recall reading that running ones OS and apps on seperate drives was of great advantage in the fact that the os isnt constantly querrying a single drive / by using a seperate drive for apps and games it prevents bottlenecking traffic of both OS and app traffic.


***Update***
 Got bored after 16 hours and decided to chance some Xfire / Teamspeak / COD UO and it actually ran as good as it had prior to my noticing it was time for a defrag in the first place with defrag running in the background (There was an occasional studder to it, but it was short lived and alot rarer than one might expect it to be / 3-4 minute intervals). No doubt added some time to the defrag process but it's nice to see that they've eliminated the need to set up absolute idle time for the PC to take care of this lil' nessisary evil.


***Update x2*** 23.5 hours later, I'm good to go. Think I'll go grab Dr. J's suggestion for the next time I do this (In 2 weeks or so).

***Update x3*** Grabbed iobit and spun the wheels. Nice that it seems much more familiar (Being able to watch the drive defrag like a game of Tetris on auto-pilot) and it's not resource intensive meaning I can defrag my external drive and my game drive while I watch a movie on the storage drive, or storage drive and play a game and do the os / app drive while I sleep. Thanks for the heads up Dr J, +'s 2 ya

[MindlessOath]

i never belived in defragging the hard drive. not one bit! it shouldnt be needed especially with an NT system.  its a utiltiy of the past! even then it was subjective.

a good reformat fixes much and its more recomended! but in any case you wont notice any differnce with a defrag, its all smoke and mirrors on nt systems.

if it makes you feel better at night, then whatever, im just putting two cents in. then again my drive is a raptor and i probably wouldnt notice a differnce because of that very reason (tho in the past i never had a raptor and still had the same opinion!).

[Dr.Jeckyl]

All I know is I've seen differences in response times after I defrag. *shrug*

[Autoload]

i never belived in defragging the hard drive. not one bit! it shouldnt be needed especially with an NT system.  its a utiltiy of the past! even then it was subjective.

I agree to an extent with this statement.  Great debate has been going forth with defragging NTFS volumes.  The truth (and this can be Googled easily) is that NTFS volumes are much less prone to fragmentation issue than FAT volumes.  That's it.... less prone.. not impervious.  Sometimes this gets convoluted in to "you don't have to defrag NTFS volumes", but that just isn't the case.  You do need to defrag them depending on use, but at a much, much less frequent intervals.

The warm fuzzy folks get (that I believe MO is referring to) is a left over from the FAT only days and NTFS pre 4.0 version.  Back in the day speed freaks and game tweakers (myself included) would spout off about weekly defrags keeping your system running faster.  In the days of FAT16/32 yes... Nowadays.. not really.  I consider myself a power PC user and defragging once or twice in 12 months is nominal for my OS partition.  My data storage NTFS volumes have never been defragged (and never will be)