PC Maintenance tips and advice
- Thread starter Wolfram23
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While all of those were important, I gotta say the most important is keeping the PC clean. That is the number one thing that kills computers, ruins hard-drives, fries video cards, and stalls fans.
And it is more common than any other problem a computer could have! Maybe even more common than twice all the other problems combined...
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Addendum: Everyone claiming that defraging is bad... you... you don't really know what defraging does, do you? I will try... TRY... to be as simple as possible about this:
Information is written on an actual physical disk on your harddrive (layers and layers and layers of disks, actually).
The physical location of the data on the physical disk could actually be written on opposite sides of the disk(s). This leads to longer access time (and more wear over-time of the head), especially with (ahem) large applications that uses many different files.
Disk Defragmenter rewrites the data to better serve efficient use of the moving parts and faster access to currently used data.
Important note: All hard-drives are designed to write, erase and rewrite data constantly. Just rewriting where the physical microdots are is not going to damage sectors of any hard-drive... unless you're using a really useless thing in which you can never erase anything for fear of damaging a soft-plastic oblong-shaped square and off-colored...
And it is more common than any other problem a computer could have! Maybe even more common than twice all the other problems combined...
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Addendum: Everyone claiming that defraging is bad... you... you don't really know what defraging does, do you? I will try... TRY... to be as simple as possible about this:
Information is written on an actual physical disk on your harddrive (layers and layers and layers of disks, actually).
The physical location of the data on the physical disk could actually be written on opposite sides of the disk(s). This leads to longer access time (and more wear over-time of the head), especially with (ahem) large applications that uses many different files.
Disk Defragmenter rewrites the data to better serve efficient use of the moving parts and faster access to currently used data.
Important note: All hard-drives are designed to write, erase and rewrite data constantly. Just rewriting where the physical microdots are is not going to damage sectors of any hard-drive... unless you're using a really useless thing in which you can never erase anything for fear of damaging a soft-plastic oblong-shaped square and off-colored...
I don't know either. Maybe you should think about it before adding any commentary ?cliffski said:
There are numerous people out there who pull out of arse arguments, back them up with nothing else than their own opinions, doubtful experience dating back to times when Dead Sea Scrolls weren't even released and questionable credentials. Either provide some additional input, only make it more precise, substantial and produce some benchmarks proving your point this time, OR go through the gate #2 and simply let experts do the talking.
http://s-ak.buzzfed.com/static/imagebuzz/web04/2010/10/28/16/frankenstein-as-anton-chigurh-1427-1288299418-36.jpg
People these days...
That's the proper way to handle things in technical discussion.Wolfram01 said:
Edit : I'm still not convinced about defraging. The results :
- are too often presented by people developing said defragmentation applications
- usually describe special circumstances that aren't easy to reproduce
- lack some "unimportant" details like in given example version of MS Office apps, hard disc drive model and such
Is that true? I'm in the process of building a pc now for general gaming and have a 30Gb SSD for Windows along with a 1TB hard rive for most everything else and I never knew thattargren said:
To be fair I havent even connected it yet but thats good to know
No, defragmentation does not damage sectors unless things were already going badly.... or you ran it 10 times in a row. SSD (supposedly) makes defragmentation obsolete by doing a proper job of storing data proactively. All that means, though, is that whenever you had the defragmenter analyze the partition, it'd always come up mostly defragmented already.Pipotchi said:
Defragmentation, the act of just moving microdots from one sector to another, is just a directed action that a hard-drive does all the time. So, no, not really.
Edit: I was prompted to check, and I was suffering from both heavy fragmentation and low disk-space. Oops...
Yeah, I added that to the OP. Basically SSDs work very different from HDDs, as while they do have "physical locations" of where they store data, it can all be accessed almost instantaneously because there is no physical moving parts. Defragging has zero impact for performance, then, but it does cause a huge increase in wear.Pipotchi said:
Also, I would highly advise not getting a 30GB SSD. I promise you it will cause you headaches because it is so small. 60GB would be pretty good, 80gb better. I have Windows plus my apps, but none of my games or docs/pics/vids etc and use about 55gb.
Somewhat.Pipotchi said:
There are a few features that describe every computer device. Speed, acces time, power usage are some. In case of HDD drives, there's a matter of longevity. Technically, every data storage device wears out with time. There's pretty good chance for DVD discs to become unreadable after a few years. USB pendrives will become slower and slower with each year. HDD discs will simply lost the data they contain.
And here's the problem with SSD discs. They have - at least theoretically - lower longevity than your typical SATA
or even IDE HDD. It's because of number of times that each "sector" can be rewritten. With time such "sectors" will become unreadable and the operating system will (or at least is supposed to) avoid those places and store data elsewhere - until the SSD runs out of "healthy sectors".That's the theory.
In reality, SSD technology is too young to prove this statement true or false empirically. Usually it is advised to avoid using SSD discs as medium that does a lot read/write operations. In the meantime new technologies arrive, operating systems change the way they manage data...
I guess that only time will tell how things really are.
Further reading :
http://www.storagesearch.com/ssdmyths-endurance.html
I find piriform's Defraggler to be excellent at defragmenting drives personally, and it's free.
Avast! antivirus has a free home edition which has served me well for years, since I started using that I've never had any real virus problems, as it scans anything trying to start up, if it detects malicious code BAM kills it before it can do anything, so you don't hafta take a couple hours outa yer gaming time every day or two to let your antivirus scan the bajesus outa your hard drive(s).
Also Spybot Search & Destroy is a pretty damn good anti spy/malware tool, also free, though you can donate to the people who make it if you want, same with defraggler.
if you're using a solid state drive or SSD, for the love of god do not defrag that thing, hell if you can get away with it don't put your paging file on it and install your OS on a standard drive instead, the constant writing/rewriting all of that causes can kill a solid state drive with wear so so much faster than using it for games, or storing movies and stuff.
Avast! antivirus has a free home edition which has served me well for years, since I started using that I've never had any real virus problems, as it scans anything trying to start up, if it detects malicious code BAM kills it before it can do anything, so you don't hafta take a couple hours outa yer gaming time every day or two to let your antivirus scan the bajesus outa your hard drive(s).
Also Spybot Search & Destroy is a pretty damn good anti spy/malware tool, also free, though you can donate to the people who make it if you want, same with defraggler.
if you're using a solid state drive or SSD, for the love of god do not defrag that thing, hell if you can get away with it don't put your paging file on it and install your OS on a standard drive instead, the constant writing/rewriting all of that causes can kill a solid state drive with wear so so much faster than using it for games, or storing movies and stuff.
Is the advantage of defragging doubtful? It is.
All I know is that defragging seems to work, so I do it every few months. I mostly ignore it unless there are real speed issues.
I used AVG free edition in combination with Spybot S&D for some years, never failed me.
All I know is that defragging seems to work, so I do it every few months. I mostly ignore it unless there are real speed issues.
I used AVG free edition in combination with Spybot S&D for some years, never failed me.
Cheers for the link and the info, I considered myself fairly up to date but SSDs are a bit new to me.JesterRaiin said:
I was under the impression that storing the operating system on a SSD would help it load up faster and help with the day to day operations. Would you advise against relying on a SSD for that?
The single best use you can put a SSD to is an operating system and the file paging (even if you have lots of RAM you should still use FP). Yes, it wears it out, but it will still last many years. They purposely don't let you use the full amount of space it has, reserving 10-20% for wear leveling. The average user would take many years to finally wear out an SSD.
"Data gets scattered, defragging puts it back into place so the computer can find it easier, so it runs faster." <-- I think that's about as simple as you're gonna make it. xPPebkio said:
I think more people should look at things like this, so they'd stop being stupid about their computer.
Why, yes, the SSD discs are lightning fast when compared to SATAPipotchi said:
technology ! Still, there's this case of re-writing... On the one hand people are like "buddy, that's bullcrap, pay no attention, i use my SSDs as flip-flops and they're working !" On the other - i wouldn't like to see my precious data lost just like that. :|Until this matter will be finally disproved or solved i suggest SSD/SATA
combo, with Operating System on SSD disc and often accessed folders like Documents and Settings and Temporary Files moved to partition on SATA disc. I'm using SATA also as a storage device. You know, backups, music, photos, stuff.Also, i'm very fond of portable applications. Almost every piece of software i use (with the exception of a few applications and games) is portable. In case of problems i'll simply move them between partitions or drives.
If things would be that easy, there would be only one ultimate defragging software instead of a bunch of "best there is" apps each and every "featuring unique approach".ExiusXavarus said:
Defragging isn't similar to fighting with viruses. There are no new threats every month. The technologies and filesystems specifications are years (some decades) old and yet there are new applications and new versions each year...
Using it for games... what do you think the OS is doing? I guess the OS only runs boring stuff like Word and and the explorer.DoomyMcDoom said:
So, in your opinion, SSD drives are only good for storage... right? Probably just backups, because deleting and rewriting data on an SSD is a death-sentence. Use it up until it's full and then put it aside and get a new one. Is that about right?
Just how delicate do you think these things are? Each sector has one good write in them and that's it? I really really want to know...
Okay cool thats not a million miles away from what I was planning to do, many thanks for the information.JesterRaiin said:Why, yes, the SSD discs are lightning fast when compared to SATAPipotchi said:
Until this matter will be finally disproved or solved i suggest SSD/SATA
Also, i'm very fond of portable applications. Almost every piece of software i use (with the exception of a few applications and games) is portable. In case of problems i'll simply move them between partitions or drives.
Quite enjoying tinkering with all this stuff as I build my own PC but the tech moves on pretty fast and SSDs passed me by
Cheers again