Poll: How often do you defrag your hard drive?

I use a third party app to determine percent fragmentation. I have it set to 15%. At that point it goes into an auto defrag.

It used to be that if you didn't defrag your hard drive AT LEAST once a month, it was doing the same thing as cooking your hard drive in a frying pan full of bacon grease-it won't survive. But, that was the past. This is today. Most computers defrag in the background, and you'd only need to defrag it about once a year at the max if it doesn't defrag in the background, usually less than that.
The only time I defrag is when doing something simple (like playing an online game) makes the computer whine (I have an HP w/1TB drive, 8GB RAM, Windows 7 Home Premium). That is a signal that the computer is struggling to keep up, and the hard drive is in SERIOUSLY bad condition (I could go about a month before I give in due to the whine practically driving me insane).
Today's computers are WAY better than the past. You shouldn't have to defrag more than once a year at the max (unless you bought the worst hard drive on the planet). I've only defraged my hard drive once, because playing a simple game made the computer whine, but that was because I got a virus that almost completely wrecked my computer (there were very few files intact apart from the system files, which AVG and MalwareBytes just BARELY manages to protect, along with some other files I encrypted).

It depends on what you do! If you download and try out different utility programs alot, which I do often, because I'm not always happy with the first utility function I come across. Doing this leaves a lot of garbage on your system hard drive because not all program modules delete completely and the bits and pieces let behind take up space. I run my cleanup utility then run a module called smart-defrag. About every 2 weeks works for me and I'm not stuck to my computer screen for Loooong periods of time watching the defrag process. I don't like automatic processes either. In fact I don't like Windows 7 automatic update feature at all, but that's another story!

Windows 7 makes it easy to schedule automatic defragmentation using the disk defragmenter that comes with it. I recommend once a week, unless you're someone who does very little with their PC. Over time, fragmented files will slow Windows down. Also, running defrag usually doesn't take long - maybe 5 minutes or less, depending on how many files have changed/added/removed.

Pretty much every day.
But I'm constantly dealing with large video files and photo scans, so it's necessary.
I use IOBit Smart Defrag. Works great.

I bought Diskkeeper for my XP desktop but I just use the Windows Defrag on this Win 7 laptop. I run it maybe once a month or so, maybe once every other month. But it rarely reports over 2% of fragmentation. I decided to leave well enough alone as HP partitioned this 500GB drive into 3 drives, but two of them are very small and for restore and utility functions. That left me with about a 450GB C-drive. I just let Windows and HP do it's thing and it seems to work pretty good. Files open about as fast as you can click on them so what's the point of changing that.

it does the job as needed in the background - means for my 3 HDDs it's a few minutes defragmenting every day.

I don't like *scheduled* defrags coz it usually takes too long to finish.

Why is it that we do not need to defragment in other OSes, such as Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, Puppy, Debian, openSUSE, OS X, OS 9, etc?

I just use a paid automatic defragger that runs in the background and prevents fragmentation (most of it anyway) on all 4 drives, and silently defrags whenever the need arises. Works brilliantly and I've never have had to bother with defragmentation.

I defrag a few times a month to keep it manageable within a reasonable time frame.

I found that weekly defragging has really improved the performance of my laptop greatly.I use PerfectDisk as my defragger, and it has worked extremely well for me. Personally I love the features, it's ease of use and just overall quality. When the new version comes out, you can count me in, it's a fantastic product.

do you defragment, if at all? Since the question was put by an Admin. person what is the "official" opinion?

it was biggest pain in * when I was win user.
Now modern fs and no defrag hurah

In fact you do not need to defrag your HDD if you do not use
the system even once in a week. Defragmentation is basically required entirely
on your usage. In case you use your

System everyday at least 7 to 8 hours mainly for surfing and
a little bit for you other usages then you need to defrag your HDD at least
once in a month. But if you work with various applications and files for the
same period then I suggest you defrag the system at least once a week. The best
way to maintain the PC in all respects is installation of Advance System Care
from IObit. The basic features of the programs are free but are sufficient
enough to maintain the PC in top order. Just use this program whenever you have
time- any time- even while you are working on your PC? It silently works behind
the screen without disturbing you?Just get the program even through CNET?Mohan
S Negi

I ignore Windows Defrag, and use two freeware products for this; Auslogic and Ultimate Defrag. Windows Defrag doesn't allow me to control or know what it does, it just does something that consumes a lot of time and resources.

According to my Defragmenter...

Never.

Ask this question. LOL
I am running Windows 7 Home Premium.
It is automatically scheduled to check the hard drives once a week and defrag as needed.
Sometimes I leave the computer on, sometimes it is turned off. Quite honestly, I check the fragmentation probably every couple of months and not really give it much thought.