I the disk defragmentor on the pc a waste of time?

Question

i have a windows xp computer and my dad swears it helps but in my opinion it doesn't what do you think?

Answer 1

YES it is because when files are saved to a hard disk, they aren’t necessarily saved in an area of contiguous disk space. For example, a 10 K file might be fragmented and spread over three disparate disk clusters, each 4 K in size. When this file is accessed, the system needs to obtain the contents of each of the clusters to open it, which would involve reading different areas of the disk for a single file. When defragmentation is performed, fragments of the same file are saved in contiguous areas of disk space, thus speeding up read access to the file and improving performance.

Answer 2

Technicually it helps the system get the information faster but i usally cant tell the difference, although without doing it for more then 6 months it will start to 1. slow your system and 2. Make the hard drive alot more unreliable thus makeing bad sectors or it fail completely