Myth No. 5: I don't need to defragment, I just bought a new system.

This fallacy is often brought up to us by people inquiring about our product. We would ask them "Do you use Diskeeper to defragment your computer?" and the response is often "I just bought a new system, so I don't need to defrag."

Of course, nothing could be further from the truth.

Here's a screen of a disk analysis from a hard disk used for demos:

Color Legend:

Blue-defragmented files, Red-fragmented files, Yellow-paging file, Solid Green-system files, White-unused space, White with green lines-reserved system space, Light Blue-folders.

You can see that it's got a paging file, lots of fragmented files and lots of fragmented free space. In fact, it's got over 1148 fragmented files in 5460 fragments.

This disk is so fragmented that during demos; onlookers often accuse us of deliberately fragmenting it up for purposes of the demo. They tell us that we use some special tool that causes this much fragmentation.

In fact, we used the Windows XP installation CD. We simply installed the operating system to a brand new disk. Then we installed Diskeeper so we could get the picture you see above.

It's a common misconception that a system with a freshly-installed operating system is in its best possible condition. It isn't.

A freshly-installed operating system starts off with its files so badly fragmented that a simple defragmentation can decrease the boot time from 153.9 seconds to 111.8 seconds. That's a 27.4% reduction in elapsed time.

What's the first thing you do when you get that nifty new machine home? That's right, you install your favorite applications. If you don't defragment FIRST, your favorite applications ALSO end up on your system in a fragmented state. I defragment after installing or uninstalling any application.

Don't even ask about paging file fragmentation. A paging file fragmented into over 500 fragments is definitely a barrier to optimum performance.

So if you've been thinking "I don't need to defragment, I just bought a new system", think again.