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I recently bought a new laptop that runs windows 8. It has been about a month and I wanted to clean the system up a bit to keep it running smooth. I tried to defrag the system hard disk drive but when I click "analyze" or "optimize" the optimize drives window disappears for a millisecond then reappears and states the system still "needs optimization". It doesn't matter how many times I click on "optimize" It simply repeats the previous event. I can clean my removable disk and recovery hard drive without a problem.
Why won't it let me clean the system hard drive?
kasekris
Posted 2013-03-25T19:53:02.720
Reputation: 61
8Is your main hard drive a SSD or traditional HD? – Brad Patton – 2013-03-25T19:56:12.233
6Windows 8 defragments system drives on a regular schedule, so there is no need to run a manual defrag. By default it runs weekly. On top of that, defragmentation does not add any noticeable system speed increase, unless you are running very old hardware and software. – Moses – 2013-03-25T19:57:00.190
@moses That makes sense to me, but why would it still think it needs optimizing afterwards then? – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 – 2013-03-25T19:59:26.840
@kasekris If your new laptop is only a month old there is definitely no need for defragmentation. – Simon – 2013-03-25T19:59:37.047
I realize that there wasn't a need to defrag it, more curious than anything else, and its on a traditional HD. – kasekris – 2013-03-25T20:03:20.523
it's just very odd that it won't do it. ... i set the auto defrag once a day, to see if the auto mode would just take care of it. it didn't.. its very odd – kasekris – 2013-03-25T20:04:07.990
Can you post a screen shot? – David Marshall – 2013-03-25T20:30:24.670
i dont think that would work it happens too fast to capture – kasekris – 2013-03-25T20:40:53.063
@kasekris I meant the window before you click 'analyze'. – David Marshall – 2013-03-26T11:22:37.233
@Simon: "If your new laptop is only a month old there is definitely no need for defragmentation" – Really? Without knowing anything about the usage pattern how can you be so sure? – Karan – 2013-03-26T20:30:13.753
@Karan I was under the impression that defragmentation is needed at best twice a year (for desktops at least with traditional HDs), for laptops it might be different. Before carrying out a defrag it best to "clean up" with a program like CCleaner, then reboot, then defrag. Even then there will not be a significant performance boost as indicated by moses in his coments above. I could be wrong. – Simon – 2013-03-26T20:38:42.893
@Simon: There's no fixed time period for ending up with high levels of fragmentation, since it obviously depends upon the amount of data and especially usage patterns. I defrag manually whenever I notice that one of my mechanical drives is getting heavily fragmented, which could be once a month or once a year. As for precisely quantifying the performance boost, I don't think we can generalise that either. – Karan – 2013-03-26T20:53:58.093
@Karan I suppose I was making a generalisation & of course it depends on usage patterns - agreed – Simon – 2013-03-26T21:01:08.253