Does a defrag help?

[NipplesTheCat]

Does a defrag before a reinstall of SHIII really make any difference? Could it casue crashing or anything severe if I dont do it?

[High Voltage]

it won't hurt, but it's definitely not necessary...What you should ensure however, is that you've deleted EVERY file and not just done a partial delete. Use Windows Explorer to look under your C:/Programs header..
Cheers,
:know:

[NipplesTheCat]

I uninstalled, deleted the ubi folder and the SHIII folder in my docs. Anything else related to GW that I need to look for or anything like that?

[jasonsagert]

Back to the original topic: yes, a defrag before installing and after you've installed all of the mods you want to use should help your hard drive performance. I'm not talking increases in FP's, just in loading and any loading lags during play. Of course, this all depends on your systems specs.--but, a defrag never hurts.

And to answer your second question, the only place that GWX places files is in your SH3 directory. So, if you got rid of that, there should be nothing else.

J

[NipplesTheCat]

76% fragmentation...hrrrmmmm. Well it sure loads a hair faster now. Reminds me of the time I did a disk cleanup and it ran all night and freed 11gb of space.

[NefariousKoel]

I try to do a defrag once a month.

Sometimes I fail, but it is certainly noticeable afterwards.

[jasonsagert]

As I tell my friends; If you want a computer to run well, it needs periodic maintenance just like a car does :yep: Try doing the maintenace (spyware, virus, defrag, disk cleanup, etc) every week. Your computer will thank you--and reward you with better performance.

J

[Mooncatt]

yes i defrag as often as possible. and i use "tuneup utilities" a brilliant program that comes with a 14 day trial. it scans your system and looks for any errors or structural instabilities and corrects them it also looks for missing reg keys and all the stuff that can go wrong with a pc. it will also delete old empty files from games you have uninstalled etc. it also does all the disc cleaning stuff and defragger as well. well worth a download for it imho:know:

linky http://www.tune-up.com/products/tuneup-utilities/

[danlisa]

I have found differing results with Defrags.

In the case of SH3 + MODS, I would uninstall and then disable my pagefile, then defrag the HDD. If you're using windows defrag, don't touch or have any use on the PC while it's running. If you do the process seems to skip areas.

I have found that if your HDD needed a defrag before you installed SH3 or large amount of files but you didn't do this but waited until the installation is complete, then you will experience a drop in performance because some of the files have been moved by the defrag.

Short answer always defrag AFTER removing large amount (size) of files.

[Dowly]

Speaking of defrag... I think I havent defraged my HD´s in almost a year.:doh: Cant really say that I´ve noticed anything go haywire, tho. ;)

[Brag]

Someone in this forum recomended Crap Cleaner ( a freebee register cleaner) I installed it yesterday. I installed it yesterday and, wow, what a difference it made! Only bit of annoyance, it got rid of some useful cookies like auto log into this forum and a few other sites. GWX career loads one minute faster.

[Zantham]

Imagine you are reading a large book. Now imagine that none of the pages are in order. You read page 1, then have to go to the table of contents to find out that page 2 is really on page 428, and page 3 is really on page 296, etc etc. So while you could read a book in this manner, it would take you a lot longer to read the book, not to mention the wear and tear on the book itself from having to thumb through all the pages.

Defragmenting the hard drive basically tries to find all the pages that are out of order and put them back in order again. A simple defragmentation tool (like Windows Defragment) will simply try to at least get the chapters together, but isnt likely to get them in order. A good defragment tool (O&O Defrag, Norton Speeddisk and similar) will actually try to get the pages in order as well.

Basically the more your drive is fragmented, the more benefit performance-wise you will get from defragmenting your hard drive, and you can potentially increase the life of your hard drive since once the drive is defragged it should have a lot less work to find data because it no longer has to jump all over the place to access it.

[Jimbuna]

From an earlier post of mine elsewhere :up: http://www.filehippo.com/download_ccleaner/

[fredbass]

I don't know how good your basic windows defragger is compared to what I have, but I use Diskeeper 10 which I like a lot and I use at least once a week. And something important to remember is that if you do it frequently, it can be done in a matter of seconds usually. After uninstalling and installing major programs or games, it takes just a minute or 2. If you don't do it for extended periods, then of course it can take a long time. So as Nike says, Just Do It. :know: