defragmenting hdd

how often should i do it?

doing it now for the first time

well the longer you leave it.. the more it will need it and the longer it will take..

id say do it every couple of weeks..

You might want to check out diskeeper. http://www.diskeeper.com/defrag.asp It automatically defrags your hdd right as fragments form. It automatically turns on when your computer is usuing low system usage. I've noticed an increase in my computer's performance for the two years I've been using it. I believe there's a free 30 day trial. Typically any commercial defragmenting software is better then Window's built in software.

it all depends on how often and how much u use your pc. i'd say once every 2 weeks and no longer then once every month. How often to do install new stuff and remove stuff or add or remove files should tell u how often u should.

Though after a six months i like to have a fresh install of windows. You might not need to afer 6 months, but it something u should consider after a while.

Yeah, I do it at least once a month, except i forgot and basically my whole hard drive is fragmented out the ying yang

lol i install a lot really i have tools any what not to keep everything in shape the only i ever had to format was when it blue screened at boot up ( when the windows screen with the loading tube that looks like sonic is in it) any way a part from that my comp runs smoothly some times slow due to only have 240 mb of ram

I use OO Defrag and it keeps up all the time with almost no impact on resources. I highly recommend it. http://www.oo-software.com/home/en/products/oodefrag/

I'm also using a version from about 2 or 3 years ago... Hopefully they have improved on the software rather than adding a bunch of unnescary extras.

With today's highspeed, large HDDs also come disk intensive activities. Net browsing itself leads to somuch getting downloaded not to mention the size of files, be it video or music. Even a typical text document is much larger than it ever has been. Fragmentation slows down systems and leads to instability. A system admin would know the number of issues faced as a result, whether its freezes, crashes or even time lost everyday in trying to troubleshoot bott issues. Its like a disease that has to be prevented before it can cripple the performance lent by everything else.