A new Microsoft TechNet article, Maintaining Windows 2000 Peak Performance through Defragmentation, was recently published. The article provides a very good overview on disk fragmentation. From 2005 to 2006 Microsoft has improved dramatically in their defrag schedule recommendations, switching from the outdated monthly rule of thumb to recommending a weekly schedule. While Microsoft's recent schedule recommendation is a big improvement, it doesn't go far enough. In this article Microsoft makes the observation that, "normal, day-to-day use of your computer will cause fragmentation". Even a desktop in a client-server environment (where the data resides on a file server) can see 1,000+ fragments build up on its local disk drive in a single day. Worse yet these fragmented files are probably among a small set of files you use the most. A daily schedule is really the way to go. A daily defrag schedule keeps your defragmentation jobs short and handles fragmentation as it occurs, ensuring no losses in performance.