Wait a minute...Defragg is Evil ???

When did defrag go over to the dark side ??

I always read "Defrag your drive before you start a project" when discussing disk maintenance and performance.

So are you saying the files are....GONE ??? :-(
I can still see the folder.

What do you think causes this...it's not the first time it happened.. but last time the files just reappeared by themselves. Someone at work thinks it's a common occurence with firewire external hard drives.

Defragging is evil if you have an unresolved file system error. Cos defragging probably overwrites what may have been recoverable.

If a file system problem best to avoid ANY writing to that drive until you've done all possible to recover your lost file/s.

geoff

Defragging has always been evil. It has always been a dangerous thing to do. It has always been a threat to data. It's just that in long ago days it was also a marginally useful evil, and some occasionally saw enough benefit to it to make it worth the risk.

As Geoff mentions, you should NEVER EVER EVER defrag a drive that isn't in perfect condition. Any data or file system errors on the drive at all can become clompletely unrecoverable as soon as you start defragging. For that matter, they can become unrecoverable as soon as you store anything on the drive or change it's contents in any way. It's just that defragging upsets and moves everything on the drive, so it's just about guaranteed to destroy anything you wanted to fix.

Chienworks: do your comments imply that you NEVER defrag your drives? Just curious as this is the first time I've heard about the evils of defragging. The general rule of thumb that I've read in most audio forums, books, etc., is "defrag often." I'm not challenging your expertise or knowledge in any way on this issue – I really want to know more about it. For example, I read sometime ago that Acid fragments the hell out of drives which requires even more attention to defrag maintenance. Anyway, thanks in advance for providing more info and detail on this.

drbam

OK.. so i've lost my files....it's depressing but not life of death earth shattering.

what i'm concerned about now is...why... and how can i prevent it from happening again.


thanks a LOT for the advice guys... really appreciate it

My method for defragging is simple and fast, but it does require some extra hard drives. Once every few months, or maybe once a year or so, or after finishing a huge project and putting it to bed, or even less often ..., i'll clean off one hard drive completely and format it. Then i'll copy all the files from another drive to that one and verify the copies are all fine. Then i'll format that other drive. Repeat as necessary, which it probably isn't. This is much faster and safer than any defrag program since the data is copied only once and the copies are made and verified before any data is destroyed. It's also much more effective than Microsoft's defrag routine.

I haven't used a defragging tool for many years. I run Vegas, Sound Forge, ACID, DVD Architect, Word, Access, Web Browsers, 3D animation software, Media player, download tons of files, do tons of capturing and rendering ... in short i save and delete and hash and move stuff around on my drives until the file tables are spaghetti. How much slower does my system run because of this? Not enough to measure. How much faster is it after getting everything back in order? Not enough to measure.

The only reason i do any defragging at all, and i only use the method i outlined above, is not to defrag the disks. I do it because it gives me an opportunity to sort through folders, rearrange how they are set up, get rid of useless crud, and recover from the occasional pesky file system errors that always seem to creep in. Basically i use it for house cleaning, not for defragging. Yes, the effect is that the files become unfragmented, but that's not the reason i do it.

Thanks Chienworks! That is really useful information.

drbam