Defrag PC's automatically

[TechSupp]

How do I automatically defrag the school PC's or should I be doing something else to help keep them in tip top shape. I have a VB scripts to defrag them if I add it to their log off script but would really only want to do this once a week at shut down. So how can I get it to check if its been run already or as I said any other suggestions.

[Geoff]

Re-Image them every chance you get.

[SOSAGES]

there is an argument that depending on OS you should never defrag them.

[davyboi]

if every thing is saved to the server then hardly any data will go on the c drive so there isnt much point doing a defrag but if you really want to you could set up a sceduled task and have it run after school, there is probly an easier way but thats the only one i can think of off the top of my head

[ZeroHour]

there is an argument that depending on OS you should never defrag them.

Linux I take it?
I dont have any success defragging things in general. The first reboot after defrag has a BAD habbit of slowing my pc down and it actually has killed my pc before (3rd party software did this - good stuff too ).
Re-image would prob be the best plan. Maybe once each term or year depending on how often you throw changes out?

[titanium]

I'd simply recommend Diskeeper. Its excellent for pro active automated background defragmentation. You can just install it to run in the background and it will defrag whenever needed. The 2007 edition has a real time on the fly defrag which is cool. Saves the hassle of scheduled tasks or manual defrag.
I am an advocate of regular disk cleanup and defrag of the system for optimum performance. Guess it would depend on each user as to how much to do it!

[srochford]

Does anyone ever see any real speed improvements following defrag?

In the days of small, slow, overfull disks then fragmentation could be a real issue. The smallest disc we now buy is 80Gb; the image we put on it takes up about 10Gb so there's an awful lot of free space available. this means that severe fragmentation is unlikely to be a real problem.

Given also that most multi-tasking systems will need to be reading all sorts of different files more or less simultaneously I don't really see that defragging is going to help. I'm afraid I now look at most defrag software as little more than snake oil :-)

[plexer]

I hate it when my tech defrags a pc that is in for repair I never bother and it just takes far too long.

But if you really want to and it's XP have a look at:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555098

Ben

[mattx]

We use O & O's defragging software which keeps the HD fragmentation down.
As we use mandatory profiles the HDs get fragmented a great deal and setting a percentage setting as and when the software kicks in helps a great deal.
The biggest performance improvement I saw was on our file server.