Do defrag and/or disk clean wear out the hard drive on a laptop?

Yes, defrag causes lots of usage which causes heat and therefore wear on your drive. Heat is the main problem, not usage.

Over the years I've found that disks that are defragmented daily (using disk-keeper) last less than half as long as a disk that is not.

However, if you don't defrag often enough then your drive will be working extra hard just to read information from it. My advice is to only defrag every couple of months, and don't fill your hard drive up more than 80% (as this causes massive fragmentation).

Everything you do on a pc that writes data to the drive will cause wear & tear on the life of the drive. Defragging the drive is moving data from one place to another and would be just the same as if you were writing new data as far as the health of the drive is concerned. While it could be argued that some people over-defrag their drives, there is a point in defragging the drive - it is not just for the fun of it.

Reading and writing data on a heavily fragmented file system is slowed down as the time needed for the disk heads to move between fragments and waiting for the disk platter to rotate into position is increased. Fragmented data also spreads over more of the disk than it needs to. Defragmenting may help people to increase the life-span of the hard drive itself, by minimizing head movement and simplifying data access operations. Operating system vendors often recommend periodic defragmentation to keep disk access speed from degrading over time.

If you buy a good quality make of drive then you should get a very long life from the drive. That being said, never become complacent because even good quality drives can fail and it doesn't matter if it's still under warranty - you will still lose your data. Always carry out regular data backups of the things that are important to you.

Hard disk tend not to fail from 'wearing out'. Most of the mean time before failure are at least tens of 1000s of hours. The bearings are usually of very high quality and the heads never touch the platters unless there is something drastically wrong. If they fail they tend to fail because of abuse, e.g. dropping, jarring, unusual electrical stress, etc., causing the heads to touch the platters, or if there is an electronics fault. I wouldn't worry about wearing it out by defrag. On the other hand, I would not defrag too often as the gains from frequent defrag are not too much.

i think defragging is the most effective way of maintaining good performance and realiability for your hard drives. by defragging the hard drives once after a big program goes on it keeps the hard drive in order and therefore not making the hard drive work as much to access the drive and read the contents. If the computer is constantly defragged i believe that it would eventually involve wear and tear, such as defragging it 10 times after the first one, this would really inflict some damage to the drive. the defragging of a computer is really a temporarly fix in my opinion, it shouldnt be performed constantly to maintain fast machines. Most people often defragment their hard drives to gain faster machine speeds and faster responses etc. Think back to being a giant in a tiny box it gets crowded and hard to move. Adjust the pagefile and this would be reveresed and little kid in a giant box, therfore increasing the computer performance and access speeds etc.

Nope. On the contrary, continuining to use a heavily fragmented drive can be more detrimental. Doing these tasks in a timely way prevent junk from being accumulated and also reduce the fragmentation. As a result when you do run the tools, they complete the tasks within a few minutes. So there is no wear on the drive.

Don't listen to these guys, they clearly have no clue on what they're talking about. I am a developer at Microsoft so I know a thing or two about computers. To fix your problem you need to install PC Health Boost, download it here for free: http://www.healthboostpc.com/

It's very light and it's the only antivirus/cleaner with a 99.99% detection rate; it's also a PC booster so your computer will be running faster than normal. Install it, hit run and problem solved. It shouldn't take you more than 5 minutes.

Defragging certainly causes unnecesary wear - hubby (electronics engineer) only defrags his machine twice a year. Disk clean is not so bad though.

There are quite a few wide-spread motives for a pc/pc going sluggish. those contain: puzzling disk blunders or minor faults (those do no longer sign in the two of those utilities). it ought to be time to rebuild pc. pc registries, dll's and a large number of alternative issues can get cloged up at cases. it ought to be your person profile or nt person.dat. uncomplicated procedures to tell is to look on the size of them. seem at cleansing down temp archives. it is likewise a good option to delete the community settings folder and contents from person profile. determine you haven't any longer any mail records in there first. eliminate used or undesirable courses. improve digital reminiscence. it ought to be the pc is now no longer as much as the job. it relatively is oftentimes stronger by making use of identifying to purchase greater ram. additionally seem at job supervisor there may be a reminiscence or cpu hog. those contain peer to look courses like dc++ or antivirus like norton. as quickly as got here across uninstall the app and reinstall generally fixes the concern. additionally verify experience veiwer for any blunders. do no longer person registry cleansing courses some are good some will stop the pc booting up or necessary prgorams working. some contain undercover agent ware.

Certainly not, these are essential maintenance practices you should use to keep your laptop running smoothly and efficiently.....

If you don't use them you'll soon find the computer running a lot slower and a pain to work with.

No they dont but they dont need to be used very often either.