by 
Knopper67
ANSWERS: 3
-
This would depend on the drive specifications and the specifications of the computer it is plugged into. The amount of free space on the drive and the file system it is formatted with make a huge difference too. Is it a close to empty 150000 RPM drive using a ultrawide SCSI interface plugged into a cray supercomputer using ReiserFS file system? I'd say minutes... Or is it a 4200 RPM laptop IDE drive with 20MBs free plugged into an old 33Mhz machine using FAT12? I'd say days to weeks... Also note that offline defragmentation tends to go much faster than defragmenting while an operating system is running. Did I miss anything?
-
This is like asking 'how long would it take to re-organize the load in a 74.53 foot tractor-trailer?' How big is the load? How disorganized is it? There are too many variables to give a useful answer. If you are defragmenting on a regular schedule (such as every week), and you haven't made many changes to what's actually on the hard drive (such as adding / removing programs; adding / deleting files; and surfing the internet - which puts a lot of temporary files on the drive), and your drive isn't very full (let's say 20% capacity for an example) - then defragmenting shouldn't take more than a few minutes. The more files that are stored; plus the more changes that have taken place on the drive (additions / deletions); the less free space that is left (defrag needs free space to put things back together); and the more time that has elapsed since the last defrag will all add to the time it takes. We're talking hours, perhaps days in a worse case scenario. Note that I did not take into account that anything else the computer is doing at the time (of defrag) is likely to interfere with the process, making it take longer.
-
In short, depends on how much of a mess the drive is in. Lotsa installs /removes of proggies etc. Spindle speed is not going to have as huge an impact as the organization on the drive.
RELATED QUESTIONS
Copyright 2023, Wired Ivy, LLC