Jump to content

Welcome to Geeks to Go - Register now for FREE

Need help with your computer or device? Want to learn new tech skills? You're in the right place!
Geeks to Go is a friendly community of tech experts who can solve any problem you have. Just create a free account and post your question. Our volunteers will reply quickly and guide you through the steps. Don't let tech troubles stop you. Join Geeks to Go now and get the support you need!

How it Works Create Account
Photo

XP Pro Defrag Question


  • Please log in to reply

#1
coasttech

coasttech

    Member

  • Member
  • PipPip
  • 84 posts
I am in school right now (tech school) and I just read this, “Computers running Windows XP Professional should be defragged less often as it slows down overall speed of the system.”

It does not get into why and I find this kind of odd! Anyone know why it would be bad to defrag a computer running Windows XP Pro??


Coasttech
  • 0

Advertisements


#2
dsenette

dsenette

    Je suis Napoléon!

  • Community Leader
  • 26,047 posts
  • MVP
that doesn't sound correct at all (is this book published by NIIT by chance?)....XP (in theory) has less need to be defragged in general because it supposedly handles data transfers better resulting in less fragments...but i can't see a reason why putting all the data back in order would slow anything down....i could be wrong...but it sounds silly to me
  • 0

#3
rivekm

rivekm

    Member

  • Member
  • PipPip
  • 65 posts
[size=7]Just out of curiousity what is the ISBN number of that book? I have never heard of defrag slowing down a system? It really puts things back in order, kind of like a shelf of books- you take a book off the shelf and put it back in the wrong spot when all the books were originally alphabetized...you keep taking books off the shelf and putting them back it takes you longer to find the books- then you decide to put them in alphabetical order again so you can find the books faster...that is what defragging does in simple terms. And essentially the hard drive accesses information faster. :tazz: Then after defragging doesnt help- I reformat...about 1 or 2x a year.
  • 0

#4
rivekm

rivekm

    Member

  • Member
  • PipPip
  • 65 posts
found this thought it might help:

What is file fragmentation?
Sometimes when you install a program or create a data file, the file ends up chopped up into chunks and stored in multiple locations on the disk. This is called fragmentation.

What makes this happen?

When you first install your operating system and programs on your hard disk, they are written to the disk, for the most part, in one contiguous block without any gaps. The exceptions are certain system files that must be stored in specific locations. Over time, as you create and then delete documents or uninstall programs, once-filled locations are left empty and you end up with files dotted all over the disk.

Now, when Windows is writing a file to the disk, it looks for a suitable piece of free space in which to store it. What happens, then, when you copy a 40M database or audio file to the disk and the biggest slice of free space is only 30M? Or say you modify an existing file, appending a whole bunch of data so the file now takes up more space on the disk. To accommodate the files, Windows writes the first part of the file in one section of the disk and then scouts around for other places to store the rest of the file. The end result is that a single file may be stored in several chunks scattered about the disk.
  • 0






Similar Topics

0 user(s) are reading this topic

0 members, 0 guests, 0 anonymous users

As Featured On:

Microsoft Yahoo BBC MSN PC Magazine Washington Post HP