Disk defragmentation is a funny thing.  Some people swear by it, others don't bother.  Obviously as the title suggests I fall in line with the latter.  If you are running a modern operating system(cough:not XP) there is almost zero need to manually defrag at all.  Windows 7 and Vista both automatically defrag on their own.  The only time you would really ever need to defrag is if you happen to have and move around a lot of large files all the time.  And I mean large, like 1 gig plus in size.  Or if you have a nearly or completely full drive.  In which case you should probably be more focused on buying a larger hard drive for storage anyway.  So I haven't manually defragged since the days of Windows XP.  Speaking of XP, there's a handy little program I'll share with you that is set and forget as far as defragmenting your hard drive is concerned.  MyDefrag is a nice little tool.  You can set it up in screensaver mode so that any time your pc is idle and the screensaver pops up it's starts defragmenting your hard drives.  You can grab it for free here: http://www.mydefrag.com/.

So, if you are on Windows 7 or Vista, don't worry about it unless you are running our of free space.  If you are on XP, grab MyDefrag, set it up for screensaver mode, and never worry again.

A couple of side notes.  If you are using an SSD you should NEVER defrag.  It can do more harm than good.  And if you are capable, a full system wipe and reinstall of Windows at least once a year can be a good thing.

Hi Tet, your post is a little misleading (to me); the subject states you never defrag, yet the message implies you don't manually defrag since it happens automatically in vista/win7.  So you're still defragging by default?

While not an expert, I have found defragmentation beneficial on mechanical drives.  For someone who experiments with different s/w, adding/removing games, defrag is necessary to 'fill in the gaps' left by removing programs.  'Tight' data leads to faster seek time/performance.  On my gaming pc, I now have an SSD, so as Tet mentioned, there is no need (nor should you) to defrag.

I also agree, albeit a hassle, to wipe the drives and reinstall everything once a year.  You will always accumulate clutter from the web, spam, uninstallations, etc. that defrag and deleating just won't get rid of all the files.

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Most people still manually defrag.  It's like multiple firewalls or something.  Not needed.

The windows defrag is completely crappy; it sets all its files to the most outer parts of the disc which is the fastest part of mechanical drives. Id much rather have my gaming files to the most outer parts.

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New Siggy; What do you think?