A client was ready to pack in his PC because he was frustrated with the fact that Windows needs so much coddling to stay healthy. One of the contributing factors to his dismay what that Diskeeper gave him the notion that a hard drive needs to be defragged every day.

To illustrate how silly DK is being when it states that, I’ll show you the report I get on my C: drive.

Findings on C:

Diskeeper has completed a defragmentation run on this volume and there remain 0 fragmented files and 0 excess file fragments. (There were 0 excess file fragments before the defragmentation run, and now there are 0% less.)

The average number of fragments per file is 1.00.

Congratulations! There are no excess file fragments on this volume. The files on this volume are as defragmented as possible. Still, you should schedule Diskeeper to run at least once a day (if you haven't already done so) to maintain this low level of fragmentation.

This drive is perfectly defragmented, and has been for some time; but Diskeeper still thinks it is important that I still run their (otherwise excellent) program every day.

Ya, right.

Also, if there are 0 fragments on the drive, how can the average number of fragments per file be 1.00? I’m no mathematician, but it just doesn’t sound right to my ears.

However, if you are still frustrated with Windows, consider the next item...

12 February 2003  |   permalink