..do I need to defrag my external hard drive?
By jeanneyvonne
@jeanneyvonne (5501)
Philippines
April 1, 2013 6:33am CST
It’s been a drag for my external hard drive since my computer is starting to exhibit some problems. I asked my brother to please erase his files from my hard drive. However, a friend once told me that external hard drives are alike with computer or internal hard drives. I had my hard disk defrag but my cousin said that it isn’t necessary. So, is it really be better without defragging the hard drive?
1 person likes this
12 responses
@jeanneyvonne (5501)
• Philippines
3 Apr 13
I guess it night be close to that number. We're talking about movies here and they take up a lot of space.
@artemeis (4194)
• China
1 Apr 13
I believe you need to scan your external hard drive for viruses and malwares before you perform a hard disk defragmentation. This is necessary there's no knowing if your downloaded files are corrupted with these security threats or not.
So be safe here.
@jeanneyvonne (5501)
• Philippines
3 Apr 13
I already done the virus scan with a separate computer. It seems fine but I am willing to have it a go again if I move gain a lot of files or need to scan my back-up data.
@jeanneyvonne (5501)
• Philippines
3 Apr 13
Think 'Once is a while' is a good time frame. it's mostly for storage purposes and when things go bad to my laptop. Then again,you'll never know if you put too much files and deleted it. much better that it is always in shape.
@jeanneyvonne (5501)
• Philippines
3 Apr 13
I haven't defrag my external drive yet (it is really for storage) but I do it often for my internal hard drive since I deal with moving or deleting a lot of files.
1 person likes this
@varier (5685)
• Indonesia
2 Apr 13
It's always better to defrag your harddrive - either internal or external. Especially if you save/delete often on that hard drive.
Defrag can be a pain in the neck, I know. You have to find a time when your computer/HD is on, but you aren't using it; sometimes you have to free up disk space to be able to defrag, which means you need to save files to another removable drive.. Blah..
But it's a worth thing to do. 
@jeanneyvonne (5501)
• Philippines
3 Apr 13
I agree. I think defragging is one of those maintenance things that needs to be done routinely so that hard core computer users like me will have a healthy computer to work on for a lot of tears to come.
@jeanneyvonne (5501)
• Philippines
3 Apr 13
Work and leisure. I had a ton of activities in both categories.
@ElvisH1978 (101)
• United States
1 Apr 13
Depends on how many files were actually deleted. Defrag is meant to rejoin information clusters and make data fragments closer on the disk so that information can be read faster. Hence how defrag makes a computer faster. It will also help if many files were moved from placed to place.
If you havent been moving files to and fro or doing alot of file deletion then you may not need to defrag. It also wont hurt it any to defrag your external drive once in awhile either.
@jeanneyvonne (5501)
• Philippines
3 Apr 13
Well, most of the files I was asked to be deleted were movies. they take too much space and frankly, people watch it one r twice and then forget about it. I guess I might need one since movies tend to take large spaces in any drive.
@ajithlal (14716)
• India
2 Apr 13
I think you should defrag your external hard drive and defragmenting helps to have more space and less errors. I am not sure about defragging external hard disk, but I think it is good to do so. 
@jeanneyvonne (5501)
• Philippines
3 Apr 13
I think so too since i did lose some files and gain some space. It might consolidate some things. Anyway, I am thinking of deleting some things aside from the feature films. Nice time to sort out my digital junk.
@ReViewMeMedia (3785)
• United States
4 Apr 13
You should probably defrag your external hard drive, but if you're pirating movies, you should probably make sure your computer is scanned for viruses because torrents can give your computer viruses.
@jeanneyvonne (5501)
• Philippines
3 Apr 13
I usually defrag my internal hard drive weekly or bi-weekly. I don't want to cause too much unnecessary wear on the drive (I read somewhere that it might done that). Anyway, this one is for the external drive which hasn't been defrag.
@asmawahabbcs (73)
• Pakistan
2 Apr 13
Yes your cousin is telling true that is no need to defragging the new hard drive. External hard drive is necessary when you have a lot of work and data and your internal hard drive doesn't have capacity to store this otherwise you can use only internal hard drive. Do not take tension and do your work happily
@jeanneyvonne (5501)
• Philippines
3 Apr 13
It's not a new hard drive- it's an external one where I keep my back-up files. I needed some space because my internal hard drive (in my laptop) might have some problems or I might buy a new one.
@jeanneyvonne (5501)
• Philippines
3 Apr 13
I think it is close to that since I asked to delete large files, specifically movies.
