Disk Trending to Schedule Computer Defrag

You may not realize how much you rely on your computer network for the success of your business. One day without your computer network could mean a great loss of revenue for your company. Your computer network can become sluggish and experience crashes when it suffers from hard drive fragmentation. Regular defragmentation keeps your network running quickly and efficiently, however, you may forget to schedule a defrag. Disk trending takes the worry out of having to remember when to defragment.

Hard Drive Fragmentation

When your computer is new, data is stored contiguously, leaving large blocks of free space available. Over time as you add and delete programs and files, your computer becomes disorganized. Deleted files leave small, disconnected bits of free space, and new stored files are sometimes broken up to be saved in multiple areas across the hard drive. This is called fragmentation. Fragmentation causes:
  • computer system slow down
  • frequent program and system crashes
  • longer times needed to find and open files and programs
  • shortened lifespan of hard drive.
Defragmentation puts files back together and stores them contiguously to free up disk space, increasing the speed and lifespan of your computer.

Understanding Disk Trending

A regular schedule for defragmentation keeps your computer network running at its best. You can purchase defragmentation software, such as Raxco's PerfectDisk, that comes with the option to automatically defrag when you specify:
  • daily
  • monthly
  • weekly
  • when the screensaver is running.

Determining how often to defragment is simple with another tool known as disk trending, also found in Raxco's quality defragmentation software. Trending disk space is the process of analyzing your hard drive and collecting information about how it fragments files. Here are some disk trending basics:

  1. The tool runs in the background and uses statistics to help you decide when to defragment.
  1. The data is kept in a comma delimited file, but you can easily transfer to a CSV file supported spreadsheet such as Excel for readability.
  1. When your disk becomes at least 7 percent fragmented, it is probably time to schedule a defrag session.
  1. By using the information gathered by your disk trending feature, you can see how long it takes for your drive to reach the 7 percent fragmentation level.
  1. You can then schedule automatic defragmentation at the appropriate time intervals: daily, weekly or monthly.

The Benefits of Trending Disk Space

You may wonder why trending disk space is really needed when you could just schedule defrag frequently. Defragmenting a computer network is a lengthy process and takes up much of a computer's resources. Additionally, some programs are unable to remain running while defragmentation occurs. Knowing when you need to defragment with disk trending will limit downtime on your computer network.

Reviewing Disk Trending Statistics

As your business evolves, computer operations may change on your network, meaning there could be a change in your hard drive operation. Since the disk trending tool runs in the background, updated data is ready for review at any time. Computer experts suggest reviewing your disk trending statistics at least monthly, and whenever major changes to the computers occur on your network such as:
  • new programs installed or uninstalled
  • system crashes
  • system slow-downs.
Resources
 
Computer Services (2007). How often to run computer disk defrag? Retrieved March 23, 2009, from the Computer Services Birmingham Web site: http://computer-services-birmingham.com/computer-maintenance/151-how-often-to-run-disk-defrag-.html.
 
Diskeeper Corporation (2009). Diskeeper 2009. Retrieved March 23, 2009, from the Diskeeper Web site: http://www.diskeeper.com/diskeeper/diskeeper.aspx.
 
Raxco Software (2009). PerfectDisk solutions for business. Retrieved March 23, 2009, from the PerfectDisk Web site: http://www.perfectdisk.com/business.
 
Tschanz, D. PhD. (2004). Bring order to hard drive chaos. Retrieved March 23, 2009, from the Redmondmag.com Web site: http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:gbCHOkTvlqcJ:redmondmag.com/reviews/article.asp%3FEditorialsID%3D488+how+does+%22disk+trending%22+work%3F&cd=5&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us.
 
Virata, J. (2003). Defrag it: PerfectDisk 6.0. Retrieved March 23, 2009, from the CAD Web site: http://cad.digitalmedianet.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=18304&afterinter=true.