Hard Drive Fragmentation

[Mr.OppressoLiber]

I have a 80GB Seagate SATA drive on an A8V using the VIA controller. I was wondering how long does it normally take a drive to start getting fragmented really badly. I'm using Diskeeper to defrag my HDD. I've been testing a few things out, and analyzing my drives every few seconds. Anyway every time I do that, it says the drive is fragmented, therefore I would defrag. Any ideas or suggestions on why it would be doing that?

 

[tiebird321]

if the 80gb is the boot drive
it will be if you use it to do anything at all

IE cache is usualy the culprit
something is always getting deleted and replaced

so you will have fragmentation
what to look at though is the total fragmentation
if its like .01% just ignore it
if its 10+ precent maybe its time to do something about it

 

[RS3RS]

Any time you do anything on a hard drive (writing/replacing information, which happens just opening a website) you'll get fragmentation... It's not something you can avoid. Like what the previous poster said, what you need to look at is the percent total fragmentation.

I usually defrag if it's over about 3 or 4%, but that's probably being a bit picky. Just keep an eye on it and learn how much it fragments over time. If you just use your computer for surfing the web, it's not going to fragment nearly as fast as if you install/uninstall software all the time, etc.

 

[HTPC Rookie]

if the 80gb is the boot drive
it will be if you use it to do anything at all

IE cache is usualy the culprit
something is always getting deleted and replaced

so you will have fragmentation

I bought and installed a copy of Farstone's Virtual Hard Drive. Created a 10Mb virtual drive in memory, moved my IE temporary files directory over to it. It gets fragmented just as bad as the real hard drive's temp files directory does, but it's so fast it doesn't affect surfing at all anymore. And it defrags in a heartbeat.

http://www.farstone.com/home/ensite/products/virtualdrive.shtml

a lot cheaper on ebay

 

[scoob8000]

Really all depends on what your using your PC for..

 

[Mr.OppressoLiber]

ok, well how about this, lets say you just finished defragging your machine, 30 seconds later it's not going to say it's more than 10% fragged again is it?

 

[BillR]

IE can be a pain that way so I keep a small partition or second drive for IE’s junk (cache) files. That helps keep my “C” drive from fragmenting too quickly. You can also make a “fixed size” swap file as well, that also helps.

So far I can’t find where “FoxFire” will allow you to put it’s cache files on another drive.

 

[abudhu]

Not to be an @$$, but it is HD Fragmentation Question.

My C drive is being Crazy! It tells me its 25-40% fragmented even though all the blue is together and their is no red. Run it anyways, and it does NOTHING. Then when it supposedly is fragmented to 60% I run it, and it knocks it back down to 25ish, even though it really looks like nothing is fragmented...*CONFUSED* None of my other drives do this...

Edit:
Oh yeah, All that is on C is the OS, Partioned at 50GB. Nothing else resides on the drive except for 3 document files. It was formated about a week ago?
/Hijack. Sorry again.

 

[HTPC Rookie]

That wasn't too much of a hijack!

Head to Executive Software's website ( http://consumer.execsoft.com/downloads/downloads.asp?RID=50&SId=2&CId=1 ), and get the free demo. See if it agrees with uSoft's built in defragger.

 

[abudhu]

That wasn't too much of a hijack!

Head to Executive Software's website ( http://consumer.execsoft.com/downloads/downloads.asp?RID=50&SId=2&CId=1 ), and get the free demo. See if it agrees with uSoft's built in defragger.

Downloaded it, and it told me both drives were HIGH/CRITICAL. Defraged them. Then it told me something about MFT? Know what it is, but it wanted to designate 200MB to it...because....I never did in the past and had no problem. Anywho, Uninstalled it and Windows still thought C has a 12% File 25% Total Fragmentation. Lame.

 

[dariob]

Create two new partitions. Call one "Pagefile" and the other "Temp". Make Pagefile about 1-2gigs and "Temp" 3-5gigs. Tell windows to put the pagefile in the pagefile partiton, and no others, then go tell windows to put all your temp files in the temp partition. helps alot with fragmentation.