Thanks to Mackey D for pointing me in the direct of this beginners guide called 23 Ways To Speed WinXP Without Defrag ! posted over at Tech Builder's.
To defrag, or not to defrag? If you're looking for ways to speed WinXP machines used by your customers, then the answer is Not. Defragmenting, of course, is the process of reorganizing all data on a hard-disk drive so that each file is arranged into a single uninterrupted, or contiguous, location on the disk. Many system builders and technicians have been taught, and still believe, that defragmenting hard disk drives on a regular basis keeps PCs operating at peak performance. But that idea is behind the times.
While it was true that defragmenting helped older PCs, it no longer applies. Today we have 7200-RPM (rotations per minute) hard-disk drives with improved seek and latency times; many also contain an 8-MB cache buffer. Let's not forget Windows XP's ultra-efficient NTFS (NT File System). For PCs, servers, and workstations equipped with these innovations, defragmenting no longer makes much improvement, if any, to system performance.
23 Ways To Speed WinXP Without Defrag
Update: I've now fixed the link thanks to shaunj66
To defrag, or not to defrag? If you're looking for ways to speed WinXP machines used by your customers, then the answer is Not. Defragmenting, of course, is the process of reorganizing all data on a hard-disk drive so that each file is arranged into a single uninterrupted, or contiguous, location on the disk. Many system builders and technicians have been taught, and still believe, that defragmenting hard disk drives on a regular basis keeps PCs operating at peak performance. But that idea is behind the times.
While it was true that defragmenting helped older PCs, it no longer applies. Today we have 7200-RPM (rotations per minute) hard-disk drives with improved seek and latency times; many also contain an 8-MB cache buffer. Let's not forget Windows XP's ultra-efficient NTFS (NT File System). For PCs, servers, and workstations equipped with these innovations, defragmenting no longer makes much improvement, if any, to system performance.
23 Ways To Speed WinXP Without Defrag
Update: I've now fixed the link thanks to shaunj66
