[harry8]

>but launching things is mostly bound by the hard drive speed.

which got slower and slower taking swap speed with it, which slowed down everything you were actually using. You'd defrag the drive regularly and that wouldn't do it so you'd have to wipe and reinstall from scratch. And that was some hours of work but like having a brand new machine again when you were done. You couldn't believe how bad it had degraded to. The good old days or selective memories?

[Our_Benefactors]

Windows reinstall every few years still gives a performance bump IME, nvme SSD be damned. It’s hard to keep a windows installation clean with all the startup junk that worms its way in over time.

[kevinventullo]

Oh man, I forgot about defragging. There was something quite satisfying about knowing your computer was “tidying things up” behind the scenes.

[crazygringo]

Oh, when I was younger I was mesmerized by watching all of the little squares in the defrag tool change color and move around. It was like someone tidying your room for you!

[hinkley]

As recently as 2015 I was advising people that if you finish your work too early to go home, you should spend your time on updating our docs, defragging your hard drive, and reading the docs for your tools (eg, learning keyboard shortcuts or optional flags).

Defragging is one of those clear cases for time shifting things from your high value time to your low value time.