Defragging: Merits?

Wow the age of those machines in spite of their heavy use must be an indication that it is important to defrag! I am used to replacing disks every 18months if the computer is running all the time and used a lot. And the fact that it isn't affecting your other program uses says something too. I have noticed that XP gets fragmented a lot faster than Win98. Was 98 NTFS too? Sorry, simple questions, just not very clued up on technology.

Thanks for the info ;-)

Body [quote="Foxhound"]Wow the age of those machines in spite of their heavy use must be an indication that it is important to defrag! I am used to replacing disks every 18months if the computer is running all the time and used a lot. And the fact that it isn't affecting your other program uses says something too. I have noticed that XP gets fragmented a lot faster than Win98. Was 98 NTFS too? Sorry, simple questions, just not very clued up on technology. Thanks for the info ;-)[/quote]

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Windows 98 was initially Fat32. The SE (second edition) had NTFS I believe.

Body [quote="David Long"]Windows 98 was initially Fat32. The SE (second edition) had NTFS I believe.[/quote]

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Win98 was FAT and FAT32 only - NTFS read support could be added with some 3rd party bolt-ons.

Defragging NTFS is not so important since NTFS in inherently fragmented anyway - the first block of each file are stored in the MFT, with subsequent blocks allocated as needed.

For servers, bear in mind that the OS will have little idea of where data is actually located since they are likely to be using RAID volumes with data striped across various physical disks. Coupled with multi-user contention anyway, in my opinion there is little to be gained by doing so.

For WIndows XP many defraggers actually increase ongoing fragmentation because they don't set their block sizes optimally, have a read on Wikipedia on the NTFS page for details.

Hope that helps.

Body [quote="pearce_jj"]Win98 was FAT and FAT32 only - NTFS read support could be added with some 3rd party bolt-ons. Defragging NTFS is not so important since NTFS in inherently fragmented anyway - the first block of each file are stored in the MFT, with subsequent blocks allocated as needed. For servers, bear in mind that the OS will have little idea of where data is actually located since they are likely to be using RAID volumes with data striped across various physical disks. Coupled with multi-user contention anyway, in my opinion there is little to be gained by doing so. For WIndows XP many defraggers actually increase ongoing fragmentation because they don't set their block sizes optimally, have a read on Wikipedia on the NTFS page for details. Hope that helps.[/quote]

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Correct Win98 was never NTFS it was it was moving from FAT16 to FAT32 not Fat to NTFS.

Thanks for confirming what I said earlier about NTFS defragging not being that important like it was in the days of FAT.

Do you think the defrag utitlity will be completely removed from the next Windows OS if it uses the WinFS file system?

Body [quote="David Long"]Correct Win98 was never NTFS it was it was moving from FAT16 to FAT32 not Fat to NTFS. Thanks for confirming what I said earlier about NTFS defragging not being that important like it was in the days of FAT. Do you think the defrag utitlity will be completely removed from the next Windows OS if it uses the WinFS file system?[/quote]

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