More Awesome Than You!

I'm here (once again) to seek the advice of those far more Awesome than me.

I defragged last before setting up the games (this'd be about two years, maybe more?) and I've since done a lot of downloading of cc, and shuffling, deleting, etc of various files and programs since that time. I know my computer is desperate for a defrag, but I'm worried it will upset the cc, the all-important mod/hacks and possibley FUBAR my games, lots, stories, and legacy families. -frets-

O' Holy Awesomeness..es... hear my plea!

It's a good thing to defrag your computer every once in a while.  It helps the computer find things better.

XP will tell you if you should, by doing an analysis.

I'm quite unawesome but I've used Norton/Symantec utilities since my first 286 and have regularly run them.  With my latest computer (an XP system) I have instructed Norton's Systemworks to perform its "one button checkup" and "speed disk" (the defrag utility) every Saturday morning- as well as the virus scan - while I do household chores.  At least that gives me an excuse to do responsible things.

Never had a single issue with any of my computers and I can assure you that defragging your hard drive will have no ill effect on your software.  If you're that paranoid about it, back up your game file (which you should regularly do anyway) and stash it away on a DVD or CD.

You should first run your system's scandisk utility to check for any errors before you do a defrag.

I run 3 anti-spyware programs (ad-aware by lavasoft, spybot search and destroy, and crapcleaner) at least once a week, and a pre-boot virus scanner (avast!) and defrag at least once a month.  I also defrag before installing any stuff or expansion packs, after uninstalling any programs, or after any major custom content clean-up.  Defragging even when the utility says it is not necessary cuts down on defrag time, so it only takes 20-30 minutes each time.  Please, please defrag!  :o   It may even improve your load times!


ETA:  Don't use ccleaner unless you know what you are doing, or someone who does is looking over your shoulder.  It does edit the registry, and even though you can back up the registry before you fix your shit, if you somehow click the wrong button and don't back up, you can f-up your whole system.  This isn't very likely, because ccleaner is a very well tested program that comes highly recommended from a lot of trustworthy people, but it is possible.   ;)

NTFS is prone to fragmentation even though it doesn't get as fragmented as FAT32 systems.  You should defrag it once in a while using Windows Defragmenter or get something like Diskeeper (http://www.diskeeper.com/) to automatically do it in the background so defragmentation doesn't take as long in the future.  Diskeeper also works a bit faster than the default one and won't lock you out of using your computer during defragmentation.

You shouldn't defragment Flash Media (Flash Drives/Some MP3 Players/Camera Memory Cards) since it provides no benefit and actually causes the drive to age a bit faster.

This can be beneficial, if you can kill it while still under warranty so you can get a new shiny one.

Strangel, I've found this site http://www.geekgirls.com/windows_defrag.htm (http://www.geekgirls.com/windows_defrag.htm) to be really good for info on de-fragging and such.  It's pretty good at explaining why you need to de-frag and tells you how to go about it in plain english.

I've provided a link directly to the de-frag page but the rest of the site is worth checking out too.

Siggy

Oh I KNOW I need to defrag, and why. -giggle- But I must thank all of you for taking the time to explain it, maybe someone will read all this and go "oooooooooohhhhh". -feels so loved, always gets answered so well-

My biggest fear was screwing up my gameplay. And.. SpaceDoll.. maybe you could answer me something? Does ccleaner work with custom content, or is it something entirely different? I'm going batty trying to thin out my cc and not being able to match up which mesh goes to what clothing/furniture/hair.

My screensaver defrags for me.

hsDefragSaver.

Ccleaner is short for crapcleaner (it's called different things in different forums), and it is for fixing registry and startup problems, such as references to programs that have been uninstalled.  It is great for cleaning out all the crap that comes pre-installed on new computers, such as AOL, that you just can't seem to get rid of.  It also helps repair the registry if malware or a virus is rewriting it.  For help with that kind of stuff, check out CastleCops: http://www.castlecops.com/ (http://www.castlecops.com/) With the help of HijackThis logs, the mods there can deal with all sorts of serious issues.
 For your custom content, use Sims2Pack Clean Installer: http://sims2pack.modthesims2.com/ (http://sims2pack.modthesims2.com/)

Wow.. I'd never heard of crapcleaner. LOL
Thankfully, my computer is a fairly new purchase, stripped clean of even the pre-installs by my husband, then XP carefully re-installed by He Who Knows All Computer Guts. We've since done a few upgrades since the original machine my mother bought for me (this computer is essentially my portion of my grandfather's estate, the rest is in trust for my son's future caretakers, etc at all our requests.. hence my pickyness about what goes into it hardware wise. lol Hubby knows best.) I would have asked HIM about defragging in combination with Sims, but he chooses to know nothing of sims. -snicker- He's convinced if he starts looking at the coding OR playing the game, he'll be hooked.

I've been using S2P CI, it's a big help for organizing categories and eyeballing the lovely number-jumble .pks, but I've yet to figure out how to "read" what mesh is required for the clothing and hair. Most likely I'll end up just pulling out the whole folder and going it a piece at a time. LOL Long road ahead for me!  ;)

...by the way, GeekGirls.com is now hoarded away in my bookmarks.  ;D

There's some parts about NTFS (Windows 2000/XP) that they didn't go over on that page (Maybe it's somewhere else) but essentially if a file called the Master File Table gets fragmented it ends up affecting performance a lot more than if a regular file was fragmented (Windows Defragmenter won't fix it automatically because it's in use also).  NTFS drives are less prone to performance loss due to fragmentation than FAT32 drives because that file exists though.

By the way, I was wrong about Diskeeper.  I installed another defragmentation software called PerfectDisk (http://www.raxco.com/products/commerce/products_all_download.cfm), it found that my MFT and Paging Files were fragmented(Diskeeper told me I was ok!), and there was some fragmentation with the free space.  Needless to say I'm not going to use Diskeeper anymore, but it's probably still better than XP's defragmenter and tons better than Vista's.

Anyway, the new 2007 version of Diskeeper that just came out not too long ago has a "InvisiTasking" mode that replaces the previous "Set it and Forget it" mode.  Essentially, it runs pretty much all the time using idle computer resources compared to before where it defragged every 5 hours or so and uses quite a bit of resources until it was done.  Dk's easier than PerfectDisk, and maybe that's why people like it so much.

I use CCleaner quite a bit, and it's actually safer to use than some other cleaners at least for the registry.  It doesn't catch a few things, but the entries it catches are safe to to remove.

CCleaner is an amazing little app.  I've been using it for over a year and have never had a single problem...
If you just stick to the defaults and do a registry backup upon each use, you should be perfectly fine. Even if you miss making a registry backup once, you can always revert to the second to last one..In fact, if you regularly backup your registry, you can go back months in your reg if need be (probably not the best idea if you've made a lot of changes, but it's still possible).   Castlecops, as was mentioned, has a whole section of tutorials and I believe there is one specifically for ccleaner.