Disk defrag: which disks?

Topic

New Reply

My Win 7 Disk defrag dialogue screen opens with my C drive, plus the Recovery Drive, and System drive.

I was told NOT to defrag the Recovery, nor System drive by HP (manufacturer), but I see “Only disks that can be defragmented are shown.” These 2 always show 0% fragmented.

If I turn on the scheduler do I check “yes – defrag System and Recovery” disks?
Thanks for any advice.

Reply | Quote

Replies

Defragging the Recovery drive would be a complete waste of time, since it should never be used (!), and thus there would be no problem with fragmented files – if you had any.

Isn’t your C: drive the System drive?

BATcher

Plethora means a lot to me.

Reply | Quote

I also would only think it necessary to defrag the system drive (C Drive). I’m also a little confused by your setup. In the search box, type disk management then choose Create and format hard disk partitions. This will open the disk manager. Please post a screen shot of what you have so we can determine what the 3 drives that show up are in reality. As BATcher states the C drive is generally the System Drive. I’m wondering if the 3rd partition is a data partition. The Recovery partition does not need defraging.

Was Win 7 installed on this PC new or was this an upgrade from an earlier version? if an update, the Recovery Partition is for the older OS. If you never plan to go back, you could delete this partition and recover the space, just a thought.

Reply | Quote

Thanks to both of you for helping.

Win 7 was installed (no upgrade).
Attaching the screen capture.

Reply | Quote

I am not sure what the 100 Mb System partition is, but it is so small it is inconsequential. It does not need defraging. The Recovery partition also does not need defraging. If you use Imaging, this is a much better alternative for restoration than the Recovery partition because an Image has all the apps and customizations and all updates you have applied prior to the Image. The Recovery partition holds the factory installed OS without any of the above changes you might have made. If you use the factory recovery partition to restore from, you would then have to re-apply any additions or changes you have made.

It also appears your system partition is similar to Retired Geek’s system partition. This partition may contain the boot record for your system.

Reply | Quote

Hello again,
Until today the “System Drive” never showed defragmentaion. Now it is at 6%. Is it safe to defrag the system “drive”28738-defragThank you.

Reply | Quote

Re: 100 MB partition – See the post marked as an answer at http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itproinstall/thread/29fa0858-8971-413b-ba8a-d033aa6dae55/.

Joe

--Joe

Reply | Quote

You guys are wonderful to give your time to clarifying this for me! Many thanks!

Reply | Quote

There is no reason you need to defrag that partition.

Joe

--Joe

Reply | Quote

As it continues to fragment – I leave it alone? Goes against computer maintenance. Thanks for your help.

Reply | Quote

As it continues to fragment – I leave it alone? Goes against computer maintenance. Thanks for your help.

Read the article at the link in post #6. Answer for yourself – what is the point of defragging? What is this partition and how often is it used? Do I really need to defrag a partition that is seldom used?

Then if you really want to defrag the drive, back it up, and go ahead.

Joe

--Joe

Reply | Quote

As it continues to fragment – I leave it alone? Goes against computer maintenance. Thanks for your help.

On a very small partition, this degree of fragmentation is insignificant. You can do real damages to that little partition by rearranging its contents in any way. And not defragmenting it will do no harm whatsoever. It also does not grow much, so it never needs to be cleaned up. Leave it alone, but back it up as part of the C:Windows Image Backup. That’s the default configuration in Acronis True Image Home 2011-2012, and it works just fine for me.

-- rc primak

Reply | Quote

Thank you. It helps to understand.

Reply | Quote

The MSDN article below provides a lot of info and advice on this subject.
“Best practices for using defragmentation in Windows 7 are simple – you do not need to do anything.”
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/e7/archive/2009/01/25/disk-defragmentation-background-and-engineering-the-windows-7-improvements.aspx

Reply | Quote

The only time I defragment my PCs is just before I create a new Image. At that time I clean out as many temp files as I can including temp internet files, temp files, logs, etc. I run my manual AV/AM scan, defragment using Auslogics Disk Defrag, then create a new Image of my complete HD. I generally do this once or twice a month so as to keep my Images as up to date as I can. This shortens the time it takes to restore from that Image.

Reply | Quote