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How longdoes it take to defrag a HDD?


thumpa

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Depends on the prog you are using, the rpm of the external disk and the cache size of the drive...

Plus the amount of defragmentation.

and also the % of free space on the partition(allowing the program to move bigger chunks of data at the same time).

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Depends on the prog you are using, the rpm of the external disk and the cache size of the drive...

Plus the amount of defragmentation.

and also the % of free space on the partition(allowing the program to move bigger chunks of data at the same time).

regards to the quote....on that HDD 180GB used space 285GB free space....since i gave u the total....roughly how long? my desktop is a core 2 duo 2.2ghz 2MB cahce, 4gb RAM 800MHZ, 1gb Video with a Ep45-DS3L mobo...

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but really thats like asking "how long to clean and rearrange a 10 x 10 room?"

It totally depends on what in the room(whats on the drive), how large the furniture is(how big the files are), how fast you move(read/write speed), how much you can lift without getting winded(cache), and how much free space is in the room(free disk space).

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...and also how fast is the app doing the defragging, and what settings (how thorough) one uses, how fragmented it is in the first place and and so on. Besides, over USB it'll take longer. Could be 5 minutes, could be 5 hours.

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Yes, defrag times are highly unpredictable. Some of the variables are

-speed of the drive itself

-volume of fragmented files

-size of the fragmented files (moving larger files obviously takes longer)

-type of fragmented files. eg ...system files like the page file (and MFT for most defraggers) cannot be moved online, and they also form barriers to other file movements.

-disk activity from other applications

-CPU usage

-fragmented free space

-available free space.

-and very importantly, the defraggers algorithms. Some are clearly faster than others.

So predicting defrag times is a hit or miss affair.

That said, I use Diskeeper 2009 Pro on my XP machines, and it's always left on auto defrag (defrags only in the background using idle cycles) so defrag times are not an issue for me. It's a great set and forget solution.

BTW, defragging an external HDD will take a long time because of the slow USB interface that is much slower than the internal IDE/SATA standard, so expect long defrag times. Another factor is that unless the external drive is heavily fragmented, the USB interface is more likely to be the bottleneck than anything else.

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Some programs will also move all your files, moving choosen ones closer to the beginning of the drive. That takes far longer than just defragmenting or consolidating free space.

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Whenever you defrag, you shave about 3 months use from that drive.

[Citation needed]

In fact, most studies say otherwise. A few minutes of higher usage doesn't really put any extra wear on it (it's made for it, they're not meant to sit idle 100% of the time), which will reduce seeking a lot afterwards (less work after). Companies even advertize this, e.g. diskeeper claims "extends hard drive life spans" (and they don't make profit from replacement drives either), and they're not alone saying this.

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No Disrespect Is Intended...

I was going by my personal experience.

Been doing this well over a decade

Maxtor has been the worst.

Most defrag companies will not state that thier program

will lower the life expectancy of a drive.

Defrag usually lasts much longer than a few minutes.

If it is that short a time, Drive probably does not need it.

Here is a nice discussion on it

This info does not count for win98 and lower OSs

Only the Newer OSs where most software is composed of MANY files that are located everywhere anyway.

<>

A real good article from Cnet

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13880_3-9887297-68.html

Edited by puntoMX
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