Edit - Super User

You are not logged in. Your edit will be placed in a queue until it is peer reviewed.

We welcome edits that make the post easier to understand and more valuable for readers. Because community members review edits, please try to make the post substantially better than how you found it, for example, by fixing grammar or adding additional resources and hyperlinks.

Rev

23

Are you sure about your defrag comment? I recently defragged an NTFS file system that was very well used, almost full and had not been defragged in many years and noticed a huge performance improvement. Perhaps the "no difference" comment applies to the most common cases where a disk is generally underutilised?
– luapyad
Commented Aug 23, 2009 at 4:29
1

Defragmentation will run once a week on schedule anyway but yes, obsessive-compulsive defragmenting won't be of much use. If anything one only wastes time. Also, if you don't fill your disk further than like 75 percent it's unlikely fragmentation ever causes a performance problem.
– Joey
Commented Aug 24, 2009 at 14:53
4

WRT defrag, it depends. I used to daily work in an app that depended upon two files, one ~65MB in size and another ~2GB in size. When that app became "really slow", I went and ran a defrag analysis and discovered that, usually, one/both of those files were ~85% fragmented. After running defrag, the app sped up significantly.
– J. Polfer
Commented Aug 24, 2009 at 15:01
4

"Due to the way Windows handles files, it will in inevitably get slow over time." -> Do you have any reference for that? I know NTFS uses a MFT structure, but I never heard that this will necessarily always cause Windows to become slower.
– sleske
Commented Dec 9, 2010 at 21:58
2

I know this is old, but does anyone have reference to the "inevitable" slowing down of Windows due to MFT structure (with the only cure being a reformat)? I don't understand how it would only be a "one way street", with the only solution being a complete wipe and reinstall. It was my understanding that the days of "annual" Windows reformats to keep things snappy went away with the XP-era.
– Coldblackice
Commented Jul 4, 2013 at 8:44

| Show 4 more comments

Correct minor typos or mistakes
Clarify meaning without changing it
Add related resources or links
Always respect the author’s intent
Don’t use edits to reply to the author

create code fences with backticks ` or tildes ~
```
like so
```
add language identifier to highlight code
```python
def function(foo):
print(foo)
```
put returns between paragraphs
for linebreak add 2 spaces at end
_italic_ or **bold**
indent code by 4 spaces
backtick escapes `like _so_`
quote by placing > at start of line
to make links (use https whenever possible)
<https://example.com>
[example](https://example.com)
<a href="https://example.com">example</a>

formatting help »
answering help »