Questions Please Answer

Hazy125 · September 7, 2013

So defragging it may wear it out quicker?

Not necessarily. I, being relatively new to computers. have never needed or even wanted to defrag a HDD. The amount of lifespan you gain is not noticeable in the slightest

Art Vandelay · September 7, 2013

On older OS's it did, but the difference was only a nearly nothing. Life extension should not be the excuse to defrag. You will probably use more time defragging than you prolong the life of the harddrive.

Defragging is also one of the most stressful things you can do to a hard drive.

Charger · September 7, 2013

i have been using computers since 1993-4 and i cant recall ever de-fragging a hard drive i would reformat every so often but i still have hard drives that are under 20 gb that still work

threadysparrow · September 7, 2013

If you want, think of an HDD as a pair of shoes. The more use you get out of them, the shorter their lifespan. But, in order to walk well, you need shoes right? Think of defragmenting as scrubbing your shoes with soap and water. It cleans them and makes them feel better, but it ultimately shortens their lifespan too because some of the rubber that was there is now gone due to the scrubbing. You can get 2 years out of a nice pair of shoes as long as you don't abuse them. I think 3-4 years out of a HDD is acceptable.

I only defrag after the HDD is more than 35% fragmented and I only defragment the largest files. I do this because it helps the larger files load faster for me. It might be the placebo effect though. Defragmenting came about because HDDs used to be so slow that any fragmentation on them really had a noticeable impact on their performance. But now that HDDs can run upwards of 10,000 rpm, then the effect of defragmenting is minimal

I never do those "optimize" things that come with some 3rd party defragmenters because I don't even know what they do, but if they do ANYTHING to the HDD, then it is already not a good thing. You want to do as little to an HDD as you possibly can in terms of data usage. Now, HDDs are easily capable of reading and writing huge amounts of data every day, but it's not a good thing to make them do MORE than what you need them to do (i.e. optimize them or defragment them)