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Technical Help & Discussion => Self Building, Upgrading & General Hardware Help => Topic started by: arthurb on March 09, 2008, 04:50

Title: Defragging Photos Drive
Post by: arthurb on March 09, 2008, 04:50

Hi All,
I need to defrag the drive which holds all of my photos (jpegs). However, my system requires approx 15gb to perform this task but there is only 13gb available. Can anyone suggest the best way to achieve this without deleting photo files or losing photo quality by compression?
Also, what would be the best way to file/store my photos whilst maintaining maximum quality?

Title: Re: Defragging Photos Drive
Post by: Simon on March 09, 2008, 10:02

Hi Arthur,

The only idea I had was to move some or all of the photos onto a DVD, but I expect someone more technical will be along soon, with some proper help.  Just a few preliminary questions:

Are you using XP or Vista?

Are you using any third party defragging software, or the built in Windows tool?

Why do you think you need to defrag the drive?

Title: Re: Defragging Photos Drive
Post by: Rik on March 09, 2008, 11:04

Hi Arthur

Like Simon, my first thought is why do you need to defrag. With that kind of data, you'll see little speed improvement. If you must do it, though, you'll need to move some files temporarily.

Title: Re: Defragging Photos Drive
Post by: arthurb on March 09, 2008, 19:08

Hi Simon / Rick

I'm using XP and its defrag software.

I'm only defragging because the system advised me to when I ran the disk cleanup facility.

Title: Re: Defragging Photos Drive
Post by: Simon on March 09, 2008, 20:23

For what it's worth, Arthur, if you only have photos on the drive, I wouldn't bother.  Is this Diskeeper, by any chance?

Title: Re: Defragging Photos Drive
Post by: Rik on March 10, 2008, 01:27

Quote from: arthurb on March 09, 2008, 19:08

I'm only defragging because the system advised me to when I ran the disk cleanup facility.

It's not taking into account the type of data. Yes, fragmented files will take a little extra time to load, but with photos, you're really not likely to notice. For the time and effort involved, I wouldn't bother myself. If it was database files, it would be a different matter...