defragment

[elled]

i defragmented my computer it took forever to do i was just wondering if u done it on a regular basis(i always forget) would it not take so long to do thanks

[Kerplunk]

The more regularly you do it the faster it will be...sometimes it may not need doing at all.

[Ethel]

I check on the first Sunday of every month - usually it doesn't need doing, but it doesn't take long if it does.

It's just a habit I got in to years ago.

[halfadaily]

Same as Ethel, I just run it about once a month whether the defrag' report says I need to or not. I find it takes about 30 mins to complete. If you leave it to get into a mess then it's going to take a long time to run.

[fo3nix]

larger drives, with more modern file systems, need less defragging.

older, smaller drives need doing once a week; larger, newer drives only need doing every few months.

this is helped especially if the OS is set to auto-defrag in the background when idle, as I think windows XP does by default.

[snee]

if you're running windows98 - defrag gets interrupted by other processes. Google windows 98 defrag and it'll tell you what you need to kill first - then it takes minutes