Keeping a healthy hard drive

[ToronadoXP]

I'm not even sure but i remember reading somewhere that low-level formats (writing zero's to hard drive) is a healthy choice. And as for company's telling u to run a hard drive no more than a certain period....that would be hitatchi/IBM on the 120 - 180GXP's. What's really weird is the fact that we are supposedly more advanced than where were 5 years ago but i have hard drives from 6 years ago that have never crashed and were beat to hell. Seems like the newer the drive the less it lasts 8-|

 

[ghayes]

I don't buy into the "defrag every day" thing as well. If you know what you are doing and do it right the first time, you actually slow down the rate of re-fragmentation - meaning that you don't have to defrag as often.

Part of "knowing what you are doing" is consolidating free space. This allows the file system to create new files contiguously.

Diskeeper doesn't do such a good job of consolidating free space. As a result, the file system re-fragments faster and thus the need to "defrag daily".

- Greg/Raxco Software
Microsoft MVP - Windows File Systems

Disclaimer: I work for Raxco Software, the maker of PerfectDisk - a commercial defrag utility, as a systems engineer in the support department.