Win98 Defrag & Scandisk

[pastorsnyder]

How often do I run Scandisk & Defrag. I know scandisk should be run first to fix any errors but I need to know how frequently it should be run.

 

[Accessdabbler]

You can't run it too often.

Once a week is good (if you have a couple of hours to let it run) but once a month is more practical.

 

[crisc]

Weekly defrags are probably overkill, unless your moving/adding/deleting huge quantities of files. Monthly is what I recommend.

 

[Mulga]

I agree with both the above, would just like to add that I recommend running both, particularly defrag, from Safe Mode. If you do run them in normal mode ensure ALL programs are closed, including virus scanner, and screen saver is disabled. If you do not do this defrag is likely to not run correctly, either stall or continually restart. All things are possible except skiing through a revolving door.

 

[mackenk1]

There are two answers, and you can use both.
1) Run these every time you notice your system slowing down.
2) Run them when you will be away from your system for a while, and can leave it running them as a form of routine maintenance.
Personally, I only use them as infrequently as possible, because I am lazy. On a vital system in daily use, that had to be kept in tip-top shape, and on which I was taking regular backups, I would probably do them once a month.

 

[Jooolsie]

After tiring of the long time it takes to run defrag, especially since I work with a lot of large wave files, I've been using Diskeeper Lite (free download) for the past month or so, even with the antivirus resident, and is very fast. I use it nearly daily and it only takes a few minutes.