Wiping Free Space / defragging

[jenniferatemple]

How often should free space be wiped and how effective is this cleaning process. The same question about defrag.

I do both on a monthly schedule, it takes a fair amount of time and I have been told defrag can cause problems. It has never done so for me but I did wonder what others here think. I always thought keeping free space clean would take out a lot of history one may not want any kind of bad guys getting. Kind of a way to be sure that deleted history is really deleted.

 

[Ink]

If you're not installing or moving a lot of files, once a month is reasonable for a defrag.

De-fragmenting should not cause problems, unless the tool you're using doesn't work correctly with Windows VSS or you try to defrag a Solid-state drive (SSD) - which I think it shortens it's life span, or something?

Wiping Free Space is time consuming, so once a month again.

---

Found this by BleachBit: File Shredding and Disk Wiping
http://bleachbit.sourceforge.net/documentation/shred-files-wipe-disk

 

[illumination]

De-fragmenting should not cause problems, unless the tool you're using doesn't work correctly with Windows VSS or you try to defrag a Solid-state drive (SSD) - which I think it shortens it's life span, or something?

This correct on both issues.. With a "SSD" Solid State Drive, every time they are written accessed, it wears them down. When you defrag an SSD, it will end up causing a ton of small write accesses, which will reduce the life span of the drive.

 

[jim lin]

you can delete temp files and also configure system restore to use less space so the defrag takes less time
but you cannot configure the amount of space used by System Restore in Windows Vista

you can also run a check disk on your C: drive a few times a year to help speed things up i'v noticed when i would
restore a pc and get alot of updates and or service packs from microsoft that when i ran check disk after it would
find a problem with MFT and fix it and speed up the computer

Check your hard disk for errors
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/check-a-drive-for-errors




James

 

[Prorootect]

Good read for you:

Shred files and wipe disks: on bleachbit.sourceforge.net : http://bleachbit.sourceforge.net/documentation/shred-files-wipe-disk

 

[Gnosis]

I don't defrag anymore. I think it is BS, at least from my experiences.