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Today's new PCs, to defrag the hard drive or not?
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Dear CNET members,
Happy Friday! Hope this newsletter finds everyone well. Like Jackson,
defragging my hard drives has also been one of my routine PC
maintenance tasks since Windows 95. (In case you are not familiar
with what defragmentation is, here is a wiki link). But with today's
newer and smarter technology and newer operating systems like Windows
Vista or 7, Jackson asks if it is still necessary to continue with this
chore of routinely running the disk defragmentation utility or just
letting the system take care of itself?
After reading through the submissions from our members, the verdict
is...drum roll...unfortunately, there is no silver bullet answer and
the debate continues! I don't think this topic will ever be settled,
but I will say that many members have said in the responses that while
defragging is necessary for hard drives to keep the systems running
efficiently, it is isn't required as often on new systems. You can simply
either set the system to defrag on occasion, or check manually to see
how fragmented your drives are and run it when you feel it is necessary.
Several members also pointed out that solid-state drives (SSD) do
not need defragmenting.
Take a look at what our members think about this topic. And join the
conversation and leave your mark. The more we all share, the more
we all learn. Thanks everyone for your contributions. Have a great
weekend!
Cheers!
- Lee
Got suggestions? Send me an e-mail: messageboards@cnet.com
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Lee Koo
CNET Community manager
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Last week's question
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Today's new PCs, to defrag the hard drive or not?
 I finally settled down and bought myself a new Windows 7 machine and
retired my old XP machine and I just love it. As part of a routine
system maintenance, one of the things that I've always done on my
Windows XP machine was to regularly run defrags on my hard drives. Now
the question I have for you and I don't know if you can give me a
definitive answer: Is defragging still necessary for newer
operating systems like mine? And does it help and how so? I have read
and heard mixed opinions. Some say it's not necessary and some say
it's an absolute must to help make the machine run faster. I figure
since Windows 7 has come a long way since XP, you would think the
technology would be smart enough to do this task regularly on its own
without me having to run or schedule it, but the option to defragment
the hard drives is still available! I'm confused and am asking
for your tech gurus for some thoughts on this. I hope the advice I
receive will give me some closure to this quite controversial subject,
once and for all. Thanks in advance.
-- Submitted by:
Jackson W.
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Fact or fiction? Powering down a PC via the power button will harm it
 For the record, I am not talking about holding the button down for
several seconds as would be done in the case of a hard shutdown. Only
a quick press and release--which (from my perspective) seems to send
the system through the exact same shutdown gymnastics as the "Start /
Shut Down" method. I have been using this method my entire life with
every single system I've owned (since 1998) and (to my knowledge) have
never done harm to the OS of any of my workstations.
I just had a $7,000 3D workstation built running Windows7 and the
builder told me never, ever shut it down using the power button
because it would eventually harm the OS. To which I said to myself,
"Yeah, right! I've been shutting off computers that way (Windows XP,
mind you) for the past 12-plus years without a single issue. What's the
big deal? Prove to me that this does harm."
But the more I read online, the more I see people supporting this
notion. Also, I've noticed that some people say it used to be an issue
with older computers. But today's systems are designed to be shut off
either via the power button or the old Start / Shut Down method.
So, for the record, please advise me on this. Is it safe to shut a
(Windows 7) PC down via the power switch as opposed to the standard
Start / Shut Down method?? Is that one of those rules that no longer
needs to be followed because of advancements in technology? For example,
it used to be necessary to pump a car's gas pedal one or two times before
turning the ignition to prime gas into the carburetor. But then came
the advent of electronic fuel injection, which meant you never again
had to worry about priming the fuel. Thanks.
-- Submitted by:
Michael B.
If you have an answer to this question, click here and click the "reply" to submit your advice, suggestions/opinions, or tips.
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