Topic: Critical IE7 patch issued

[Clive]

I'm shocked to learn that my 80Gb HDD is 66% full.  Does anyone still defragment their drives these days?  I used to do mine once a month or so but I don't think I've bothered with this machine.

[Simon]

I never bother, Clive, but that's not to say one shouldn't.  One idea might be to pick up an external hard drive from somewhere like Ebuyer, and transfer some of your non-every-day stuff to it.

[sam]

I never defrag my hard disk in the sense that windows talks about it - though I do check it regularly (well Linux automates it based on how many days before). I'd suggest that you have crap on there you don't need. Maybe the temp directory is a bit full??

[topquark]

It's still worth de-fragmenting the drive to help with performance, although hard disk and file system performance has increased substantially over the years.  It's also definately worth running the clean up tools on windows to get rid of any temporary files etc.  Also if you use vista take a look at how much shadow storage your system has been set up to use.  If you have your own backup strategy you may decide it's an overhead you don't need.

[Rik]

I defrag weekly, Clive, at least for the OS.

[Clive]

Many thanks for all the replies.  Do you use the XP defrag Rik or a proprietary one?

[Rik]

I use Perfect Disk from Raxco, Clive. I find it much better than the inbuilt utility as it moves all the boot files to the front of the disk.

[Clive]

Thanks Rik.