Tutorial Thursday
One of the coolest things in Vista is that it will automatically defragment itself once a week. I know very few people who defragment their computers at all and if I heard that someone was doing it once each week I would probably pass out! I don’t know why Microsoft didn’t make it automatic in XP but you can schedule it yourself.
So after you set this up on your computer maybe you should think about setting it up for those people who are constantly complaining that their computer gets slower each day. It may not solve all of their problems but I am sure it will help.
Here are the few steps that you need to do:
- Go to Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Scheduled Tasks.
- Double-click on the Add Scheduled Task shortcut.
- Click Next and you’ll have to wait for a little while for it to retrieve a list of programs.
- Click the Browse button and find the file “C:\WINDOWS\system32\defrag.exe . Once you have found that file click Open.
- Select a name and how often you want the task to run (weekly is probably the best option). Click Next.
- Select the start time and choose when it will run. Click Next.
- Enter the password for the computer. Click Next.
- Check the box that says “Open advanced properties for this task when I click Finish” and then click Finish.
- Now you need to place the drive letter that you want to defragment on the end of the “Run” line. To defragment the primary drive just enter ” %HomeDrive%”. Make sure you place a space between the two: “…\defrag.exe %HomeDrive%”. It should look something like this:
- Press OK and you are all set!
See, that was pretty easy and it will take care of defragmenting your drives since we all forget about it or choose not to do it. Now your XP machine is one step closer to being just like Vista. 
I always tried to defragment once a week, but would ususally forget. However, I never let 2 weeks go by without doing it.
I use Diskeeper and have never set it up to automatically defrag. I usually will run it in the morning and leave for work.
When I get home for lunch, it has all 3 disks defragmented.
I am curious to what options, if any were added to the Vista version. Windows built in defrag was always good at basic defragging, but lacked advanced features that I like.
I like this auto-defrag feature. Thanks for the update.
Doesn’t defragmenting itself seem like a Windows band-aide? I wonder if Apple PCs require this. Maybe my head is in the clouds here, but why can’t the operating system just organize the hard drive right the first time?
Something else related to defragging I meant to ask. I get issued a new notebook PC about every 2 years via a Dell lease program at my workplace. After receiving my new PC, I transfer the data, srub out all of My Docs, cookies, etc from my old PC and then ship it back.
I read somewhere that if I truly want to clean out those deleted files (some may be personal), I should defrag after deleting the files & Deleted Files Folder. Am I on the right track?
Windows XP is a huge leap over Windows 9x in the area of betoer organization on the hard drive. XP does not get nearly as defragmented as Windows 9x versions. I do not know if there is any improvement in this area with Vista, especially now that the WinFS files system is dead.
I am not sure that this would really do anything for you as there is no data to move.
What you would really want to do is get a good wiping program and wipe the free area of the drive. I believe Norton’s utility was called WipeInfo. There are numerous ones out there. You just want to make sure that you only wipe the free space.
Lorenzo,
[pcworld.com] from PC World on the subject of wiping sensitive data.
I haven’t tried Diskeeper in awhile but I know I should. The built-in Windows XP disk defragmenter does a good job at making all of the files contiguous but I have heard that it doesn’t make the free space contiguous.
That could effect performance if you are using a large file such as a large ISO image which means it would have to spread the file out over multiple free space sectors.
I think that is the one big difference that I have heard between the two besides for the fact that Diskeeper does the background defragmentation.
Defragging once a week is major overkill. Unless you are doing major file changes every day, defragmenting every 1-2 months should be just fine. Otherwise you are just wearing down the hard drive for little to no gain. If you check around the web, you would see most people agree.
How do you know that the defrag is taking place?
BTW, I don’t know if you folks faced it, but I had a blank password for the username, and it kept throwing up a Access Denied error.
In properties tab, I had to check the Only Run when logged on and it accepted.
I download a lot of files and move them around frequently so after a few weeks I really start to notice my system slowing down. After about a week my system is at 8-9% fragmentation and after 2-weeks it is close to 20%. At that point it is recommended that you defragment your drive.
I know not everyone is going to do as many file changes as me but I think it is good to take care of a problem before it would even occur. If I set this up for other people they never even know that it runs since I schedule it for the middle of the night, but in the long run it will help them.
If you schedule the defragmentation then you will not really know when it is running because it runs in the background. However, it would probably be apparent that it is running when your hard drive light never goes off.
Thanks OldManDeath for the PC World article. That is what I will invest in.
No problem, that is why I participate here. That and because it is an awesome website and resource.
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If you schedule the defragmentation then you will not really know when it is running because it runs in the background. However, it would probably be apparent that it is running when your hard drive light never goes off.
Great that seems good. Will keep a watch.
This would be a good way to schedule defrags for all the drives…
I posted this on the old Vista drive defrag post but no one responded to it (due to the post being old), so here it is again:
I think that defragmenting your computer is important for people who are constantly downloading, moving, and deleting files. After awhile, especially on a laptop with a low RPM hard drive, I will start to notice a slow down on my system. Searching for files definitely seems to take longer from what I have noticed as well.
Computers are getting faster and hard drives are too, but then again the size of the hard drives is also getting bigger. If you have a really large hard drive with files spread out all over then it will surely take longer for the computer to move the head on the hard drive to the correct location on the disk.