Defragmenter

Hi, Dylerbug:

 

Some Dell techie actually told you that defragmenting an SATA drive will damage it?

Yes.  She told me that i should stop defragmenting immediately. She said that a SATA drive self defragments.

K ty. I thought that was odd. Especially when i defragment i see a noticeable difference in how well my pc accesses files.

Wow, that's astoundingly incompentant.

 

SATA drives do NOT defragment themselves, and you will NOT harm it by defragementing it.  

 

The only thing I can think is she's thinking of SSDs.  I'm not sure that defragmenting them would do any good, since they basically can access anywhere equally fast, and what the OS sees isn't nessisarily where the data really is.  But that has NOTHING to do with SATA versus PATA. 

SATA is just the interface for a storage device, it has no bearing on defragmentation.

A SATA drive (or any other drive) will not defragment itself because, for defragmentation, it's the file system (usually NTFS in the case of Windows) that plays the most prominent role and not the hardware. The only way to get a drive to defrag itself is to install an automatic defragmenter (google for 'fully automatic defragmenter') that runs as a service, oversees the drive and 'self-defrags'. This is indeed extremely convenient since you don't have to waste time by scheduling defrags the old-fashioned way. However, this is also strictly software specific, and has nothing to do with SATA or PATA.

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@tigerwolf7 wrote:

Wow, that's astoundingly incompentant.

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Incompetent, but not all that surprising :), based on other stories I've heard about Dell techies.

I wouldn't randomly install any software you find on the net though.  Even among paid options, the built-in defragmenter program worked best in Maximum PC's recent tests (and I'm sure there's lots of malware out there pretending to be a defragmentation program, just as there is for fake anti-malware programs).

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@osprey4 wrote:

other stories I've heard about Dell techies.

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I got told re-format the hard drive after a failed BIOS flash with my old Inspiron 1501 when I called them. The fact that the hard drive couldn´t be accessed at all didn´t seem to matter.

I'd like to know how you were supposed to accomplish that :D

 

Reformat by licking the hard drive? ;)

 

I guess I've lucked out because I've never bricked anything flashing it's BIOS/firmware...so far.  Probably shouldn't have updated my Playstation 3 during that thunderstorm a couple of nights ago though :D 

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@tigerwolf7 wrote:

I'd like to know how you were supposed to accomplish that :D

Reformat by licking the hard drive? ;)

:D :D :D

Either that or open the hard drive and use the platters as frisbees, that would format it.... permanently. :D

This was also after telling the guy the motherboard needed to be replaced.