Defragment

After some period of time and even following the initial installation of Windows and all programs the defragmentation process reassembles files that have become fractured or commonly labeled fragmented. The process recopies files in an orderly format to preserve their integrity as well as actually boosting system performance if the main drive's volume becomes heavily fragmented.

Often you can go for a period of months as long as you simply start the tool long enough to see the analysis of how fragmentation is seen percentage wise. If you see close to 0% if not at 0% then you set to go. When you see numbers in the teens you have some problems needing attention. Periodic but not constant would be the thought.
 
Well, It can save disk space, So if you have alot of music files, and need room, like me. I do it. It helps you save space, so you can install more things. Last time I did it, I free'd like 2Gb of space... Like 500 high quality music files I can now use. Good thing to do.
 
The main point in defragmenting is not to save space, but rather to consolidate similar files together, so the files to a given program for instance aren't scattered all over the drive. Which helps speed up access times.
 
Once a drive starts seeing a large amount of fragmented files from the lack of any maintainence you then may easily run into a number of OS problems as well. This is one reason why retail programs like Disk Keeper are popular since that will automatically perform a maintainence session on a predetermined schedule you set.

One example was when comparing a drive that took 98 8.5hrs. to see mostly defragmented while XP only took 45min.! Disk Keeper was tried on the old 98 system to see the process reduced in time to just under the amount of time seen with XP by default. The fragmentation seen surprisingly was equal at 13% when that was seen. Same drive in the same system at different times however.
 
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