Defrag improves broadband speed?

I was given an old Sony laptop by a friend to see if I could get it to go faster - it was freezing and refusing to respond for ages etc. Anyway I defragged it and got rid of all the cookies etc. He now swears that his broadband speed is much faster (BT ADSL, not Infinity). No stats available before and after, but I was just wondering if what I did can affect braodband speeds like that.

Yes it can (improve web browsing responsiveness), because the browser cache can become fragmented - defragging defrags the browser cache - browser cache read quicker, bob is your uncle, web browsing goes faster.

I noticed this a couple of years ago, firefox seems to be more prone to effects of a heavily fragmented browser cache than others.

This fact has not escaped diskeeper corporation either who used that claim as a marketing segment a few months ago.

But actually improving your ADSL throughput, no, of course not

Edited by Pipexer (Mon 02-Apr-12 16:54:42)

Defragging will improve overall system responsiveness because it reduces the random seek operations the hard disk has to perform (where the heads dart about over the spinning platters looking for file fragments)

Also the CPU load is reduced, allowing for slicker operation.