It has been a loooooong time since I remember running the Windows defrag program. Up until Windows XP, it was considered good computer health maintenance to run defrag every couple of weeks.

Since W7, defrag is no longer ubiquitous. Do hard drives still require periodic defragmentation?

 

Yes, but not a solid state drive.

 

It has been a loooooong time since I remember running the Windows defrag program. Up until Windows XP, it was considered good computer health maintenance to run defrag every couple of weeks.

Since W7, defrag is no longer ubiquitous. Do hard drives still require periodic defragmentation?

No, this is not the 90's. It's the type of file-systems that might need a defrag like the old DOS cluster FAT based FS sectors. NTFS and newer file-systems don't need a separate defrag.

 

Windows 7 and above will auto defrag on a weekly basis so apparently it's still important for a mechanical drive.

 

Windows 7 and above will auto defrag on a weekly basis so apparently it's still important for a mechanical drive.

Sure, it's all automatic, no need for a separate defrag on a modern OS file-system ( Windows 7+).

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions//cc767961(v=technet.10)?redirectedfrom=MSDN

 

Correct, no need to do it manually but I think schmitt trigger was thinking in those terms. I should have explained that previously.

 

Correct, no need to do it manually but I think schmitt trigger was thinking in those terms. I should have explained that previously.

There shouldn't be a need to defrag at all (Linux) but FAT and NTFS are the MS standard.

 

Anyone remember SpinRite? Seagate 20-30meg drives were notorious for drifting their heads away from where they initially laid the track down and within a year of install would cease to boot the computer. SpinRite would rewrite the entire drive moving data to open areas and laying down new tracks to move the data incrementally until the entire drive was rewritten. Great stuff back in the day...

 

Anyone remember SpinRite? Seagate 20-30meg drives were notorious for drifting their heads away from where they initially laid the track down and within a year of install would cease to boot the computer. SpinRite would rewrite the entire drive moving data to open areas and laying down new tracks to move the data incrementally until the entire drive was rewritten. Great stuff back in the day...

Used it many times back in the day. I still do low-level formatting of hard-drives on occasion.
https://forum.allaboutcircuits.com/threads/hp-dl380-linux-desktop.142085/post-1810978

I've got Linux systems running since 2008 (on the same set of hard-drives) that have never had a 'defrag' because sensible OS file systems today have all of the needed optimizing functionality already in the file-system API running continually as files are added, moved or deleted..

 

Anyone remember SpinRite?

What Windows era was that from? W95?
Other?

 

https://winworldpc.com/product/spinrite/1x

It dates from the "MFM" and "RLL" hard drives (more properly known as ST412/506 interface drives) in the "vintage" PC era.

 

What Windows era was that from? W95?

MS-DOS, they had fixed the problem way before Windows came out. At that time, in addition to my project engineering duties, I also assisted the IT department with their plant wide rollout of desktop PCs after getting the engineering dept. onto desktop CAD systems. Eventually, since all of my process control work moved onto computer platforms, I was rolled over from the project Engineering dept. to the IT dept (to increase their head count to 5) who had no idea as to what process control was other than it ran on computers and PLCs (which really had nothing to do with IT other than it had to be programmed). Then the corporate folks decided to centralize all the IT work in the home office and I and the entire IT dept. was terminated. So, like the baby, I was thrown out with the bath water. Just before the entire corporation went belly up due to mismanagement and ceased to exist worldwide.

 

If win7 is doing something like defragment without offering a choice of when to do it, that is typical of the MS arrogant attitude that users do not matter.

 

If win7 is doing something like defragment without offering a choice of when to do it, that is typical of the MS arrogant attitude that users do not matter.

Not sure exactly on win7 but my win10 offers a choice of daily, weekly or monthly scheduled optimization. This feature can be turned OFF.
If OFF it says drives will be optimized as needed.

 

There are 2 separate problems. One is alignment, having the head continue to read the track exactly where it put down the initial formatting. Now whether the OS has written that into their code so you never see it and don't need a second source utility to do it or the hardware was improved, I don't know but the problem disappeared. Second is optimized seeking for data. Data tends to be put down wherever there is a free space available. A sort of "shotgun" approach to data storage. Then when the app needs to read that data it is scattered all over the place causing a lot of head seeking to find and stream it. But the location of that data can be optimized by software utilities just for that purpose to minimize head seeking. Now, whether MS has gotten smart enough to write those utilities into their OS to do the optimization instead of having an outside utility do it I can't answer. A lot of utilities like that tend to get added to the OS to better "improve" it. Whether the user wants it or not. Preferred by me instead of calls to their service center and being told the MS software doesn't support that.