Yeah, it's the 'well known' shadow copy service problem that results in HDD space being gobbled up after a defrag. Looks like it still hasn't been fixed in the 7 defragger....anyway, if you go the third party commercial defragger route, then some have VSS compatibility mode that minimizes this problem (only the payware ones do;the free ones don't IIRC).

I reformat only if there is absolutely no other option; I'd have way too many programs to reinstall and I am lazy (yeah, I know, clone the drive etc, but that's still a chore).

My gaming desktop has it's XP Pro install from early 2008 IIRC, and my laptop has its XP pro install from late 2008. Both installs work nearly as good as new despite the daily heavy usage. My formula for longevity of an install is

a) Do not install unwanted junk on the system

b) Do not install unwanted junk on the system

now that we have that out of the way,

c) regular maintenance with reliable apps such as Avira, Malwarebytes, Diskeeper 2010, CCleaner etc to keep the OS and filesystem nice and shiny.

d) regular hardware cleaning; atleast once a month I use compressed air to clean the insides. While gaming etc, check that the temps are always within the safe range (I don't O/C the CPU or RAM; my XFX GTX260 is a Black Edition, so already factory O/Cd). Use a decent PSU for clean, stable power.

Take good care of the hardware and OS and it will last a long time even with regular heavy usage.8)

Think about it cpu, gpu, memory speed have all increased by alot over the last 5 years but hard drive speed and the interface has not. The raptor has been the speed king for years and it's only recently ssd's have become affordable.

ChiChiMonKilla

True, the storage is almost always the performance bottleneck in a modern PC. The RAM and CPU operate at speeds an order or two higher than the storage. While the SSD certainly is in the right direction towards deceasing this performance bottleneck, it's still too expensive IMO, epecially for the measly capacities they're peddling. :cry:

For improving boot-times, defrag will help, and probably optimization of the locations of the files that load during bootup will also help. This utility from Diskeeper (yeah the defrag compnay) is said to automatically learn the boot process and optimize it.

http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/permalink/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20100323005556&newsLang=en

Apparently it will be available on Asus systems as an OEM install at first.

Looks nice, but seems to be essentially a desktop replacement class notebook without the LCD display.

I still love the original C64 though. A pity my parents sold it off without informing me while I was in university.:evil:

I tried Ubuntu (jaunty jackalope) on a spare system last year, and came away unimpressed. It offered no advantages over a decently set-up Windows rig, but there were serval disadvantages.

As for the usual complaints of viruses, defrag etc there are easy solutions. Get a decent defragger and an anti-virus software. For eg, the latest version of Diskeeper (2010) actually prevents most fragmentation automatically and defrags the rest automatically. Never have to worry about defragging. There are several very good anti-virus options, even free ones such as MSE or Avira work perfectly well unless the user does something really stupid.

One bigproblem with my Ubuntu install was that it simply refused to work well with my home network. Network speeds were consistently a fraction of my XP speeds, and despite spending 2-3 days, I could never solve the problem. Tried an older version, with limited success. It also lacked a decent torrent client. In a cruel twist of irony, I had to use utorrent in Wine lol.

Linux is free and feasible for home use only if your time is worth nothing and you don't mind giving up essential (to me atleast) utilities like Adobe CS4, MS Office etc.

I am also in a similar predicament. I bought Resident Evil 5 recently but gameplay is rubbish, so that's going to be uninstalled :evil:

I've just installed BC2, hopefully it lives up to the hype.

ME2 is a difficult act to follow, and I am not sure if there are any current games that can match up to it. I might just go back and replay Fallout 3 or The Witcher: Enhanced Edition.

The partition disk got 132GB with 2.7 GB left. How do i solve the defragmented disk?

jang_nara

Therein lies your problem. Windows defragger and the freeware defraggers all need atleast 15% free space to defrag. If there are fragmented system files, they'll still not be able to defrag even with 15% free space.

I suggest that you run a disk cleanup using the in-built cleanup utility; after that grab the free trial version of Diskeeper 2010 Professional from the official site here http://www.diskeeper.com and install it. Let it run in automatic defrag mode for an hour or two, and it will clear up all the fragmentation. If necessary, you can also run a boot-time defrag for the paging file. DK2010 is an awesome defragger, and once it has defragged your drive, it will also prevent most of the future fragmentation from occuring via something called Intelliwrite. The free trial version works just like the full edition for a month or so.