There are several third party applications that defrag windows NT. I personally have run NT without defragging for years, but I have no doubt that if i were to take the time it would speed things up. As for the "losing" everything. There is really not much more chance of losing any data on a 'fragged hard drive than a non-fragged drive. The hard drive manufacturers rate the "unrecoverable read error" rate by number of bits read, which does not change just due to fragmenting. Having said that, BACKUP ANYWAY. Regardless of the pros and cons of defragmenting, it is always a good idea to have a backup. As for the defragmenting procedure, it reads and writes virtually every file on the hard drive. It stands to reason if there is any problem, chances are it will occur DURING the defragmenting process! For my Win9X users, I recommend defragmenting no more than once every "few" months-depending on work type and amount. The average user does not need to defragment more than once a year (if even that) As for the NT users, if they are running NTFS, I usually tell them not to worry about it. If the data access off the hard drive slows down noticibly, then I take a look at it. 99% of the time it still does not need defragmenting!
David Moore
dm7941@sbc.com