defragmenting a hard drive...?

[tetsaru arigashi]

hey guys, this question may seem a little out of the blue, but i thought someone around here might know a thing or two about it.

i'm wanting to defragment my computer's hard drive, but it says it recommends having about 15% of the drive free of space, which is about 5 or 6 gigs on my hard drive.  however, i don't want to delete any of my files (even though most of it IS hentai... >_<; ), and i only have about 1 gig or so of space left available.

so...  is it safe to go ahead and do a defragmentation?  or should i try to create a system-restore point first in case it screws up something?  i'm just tired of my computer running so slowly all the time (and yes, i DO perform spyware and virus scans regularly... i use ad-aware se and ADV).

[Muhznit]

.....What you don't have an emergency assload of CDs?

[Meat]

Yeah, you could always backup some of your precious H-stuff to CD-R's or DVD-R's and then erase them from the hard-drive to free up some space so you can perform the de-frag.  After it's done you can just re-up em' from the discs.

[tetsaru arigashi]

.....What you don't have an emergency assload of CDs?

well, i always thought it was convenient to keep everything on my hard drive, but i keep hearing more and more people say that, now...

you see, i was hoping to have several hundred gigs of space for my new computer so i could just save all my anime and hentai to it instead of having bookoos of cds floating around.  but then again, i've heard from one friend that putting too much stuff on a hard drive is what slows it down the most in the first place...  and then, another of my friends said that i could have a small, separate hard drive just for my operating system, which would allow it to run smoothly, and then have the big hard drive(s) for my files...  i dunno, it just seems rather confusing to me...  >_<;

[Muhznit]

well, i always thought it was convenient to keep everything on my hard drive, but i keep hearing more and more people say that, now...

you see, i was hoping to have several hundred gigs of space for my new computer so i could just save all my anime and hentai to it instead of having bookoos of cds floating around.  but then again, i've heard from one friend that putting too much stuff on a hard drive is what slows it down the most in the first place...  and then, another of my friends said that i could have a small, separate hard drive just for my operating system, which would allow it to run smoothly, and then have the big hard drive(s) for my files...  i dunno, it just seems rather confusing to me...  >_<;

....Hmmm.... well if you have Windows XP, I'd recommend, placing everything in a big-ass compressed folder.... and just so you know, your computer's probably better than mine. 15/40 Gigs of Memory Left, 128 MB RAM (I HAVE TO LOAD THE LOADING BAR! J/K). The thing can't even emulate N64 games T_T.

[tetsaru arigashi]

....Hmmm.... well if you have Windows XP, I'd recommend, placing everything in a big-ass compressed folder.... and just so you know, your computer's probably better than mine. 15/40 Gigs of Memory Left, 128 MB RAM (I HAVE TO LOAD THE LOADING BAR! J/K). The thing can't even emulate N64 games T_T.

hey, don't feel bad, man - most of the n64 roms on my computer don't work very well either.  most of em are slow, laggy, or just won't play at all.  my friend's computer, which has a graphics card, has some of the same roms, and his work just fine, although he said he had to find and download a plug-in for em.  he even has a usb adaptor cable so you can connect an n64 or ps2 controller to your computer to play stuff!

but yeah, i may just have to go grab me some cd's and compress the hell outta my files... unless anyone knows the risks of performing a defragmentation with only a gig or so of space left...

[JG]

You can defragment with 1 gig.  In theory, you only need as much free file space as the largest file on your hard drive. Thus, any file larger than 1 gig may not be able to be fully defragmented.

I recommend getting an extrernal hard drive, if merely for the backup assurance.   Its faster and easier than a box of CD-Rs or DVD-Rs.   Backup all your stuff, then defrag your main drive, and if it does blow up, you don't lose everything (might have to reinstall everything though).  I've had a defrag tear up my hard drive before, and I lost some good stuff - now that I have a backup drive, I don't have to worry about that anymore. (I recommend WD external drives more than Maxtors - WD's support the Windows file system, meaning they can partitioned, labeled, drive mapped, carry along file system security attributes, etc.; Maxtors are Unix based, so they're more monolithic and lose all the WinFS stuff when copied.)


I've no need for N64 emus - I've got a CD64 ^_^

[tetsaru arigashi]

well, i went ahead and just deleted some of my stuff and got the job done...  guess i really COULD have defragged it without doing so... oh well.  once i get a new computer, i'll just go back to anidb.net and start eMule-ing away again.  thanks for your help, guys.