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Whats the best Defragmentation Software


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Whats the best Defragmentation Software  

916 members have voted

  1. 1. Whats the best Defragmentation Software

    • Diskeeper
      233
    • O&O
      174
    • Perfect Disk
      180
    • System Mechanic
      7
    • Contig
      8
    • Power Defragmenter
      18


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i don´t think this way would be very "pratical".

why the need to install a service?

so i can go on and disable it?

i preffer to stick with apps that doens´t install things that i need to manually remove later.

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PerfectDisk's services can be set to manual, unless you want to allow it's scheduled defrags to run, then you leave them alone.

Indeed, it can be done and it was relatively ok with PD7.

Now, in PD8 they have made some improvements. Engine will not stop automatically. Even more, scheduler(or, whatever it is called now) actually is guarding and restarting Engine. So, after defragmenting you first kill scheduler and then PDEngine.

And, to be complete, after discovering this behaviour, I wrote to PD support a bug report - engine will not shut down, and received an answer that on their computer it does shut down automatically.

After observing the same thing on 3 more machines, I wrote again to receive from somebody else, that it is so by design and I need not worry, because these services do not consume anything(!!?).

Indeed, brilliant design and great support.

For sake of politeness, no comments this time.

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  • 1 month later...

i just have to chime in with JkDefrag, as i did here!

i've always been horrified by how unfathomably huge the commercial defraggers were, for something quite simple conceptually, not to mention the actual defrag apis they all use are built into windows!

hooray for something free, fast, compact, open source, etc.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...

Hmm. This thread started nearly three years ago and it still is going!! In general, I think defragging is overrated, but I still do it for various reasons. I use it to pack the hard disks I use for TV and Movies. Those are large files and don't change much.

Diskeeper is only so so i've found over time. It works, but is finicky. On those drives I mentioned it won't even attempt it. Also, It can take several if not many passes with diskeeper to get it right. Perfect Disk and Vopt8 can do it in one pass. O&O after some early failures years ago finally got their act togehter and produce a decent app that is on par for the most part with the other two. SysInternals app is also good, but nowhere near as pretty! :^)

I've noticed that Symantec let SpeedDisk die. Too bad that was shaping up to be a good tool. The odd thing about defraggers is that except for boot up times (and I don't do that often except for testing) they all must tie into the same MS api. I've never pulled it apart, but I'm not sure how they all manage to be all that different given the limitations Windows puts on them.

A friend of mine used to run tests when he was the CIO at a big company here in Vienna. As noted, except for bootup times there was little practical difference in the performance of the disks, despite what Diskeeper tries to peddle you. Yes, there is a difference, but not much of a prctical one except in extreme cases of rampant fragmentation and load demand on the drive.

I like the new Vopt8 since they've ironed the bugs out of it and Golden Bow was always one of the most reliable software producers out there. I like the feature of being able to point to a little square and seeing what files are there. Useless, I know, but I like it. The color scheme makes more sense to me than Perfect Disk also, but I like that app as well as O&O. Sigh.

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That defragmenter needs major work! It crashed on me, apparently, because of Windows denying access to a file, because of it being open.

Apparently, it crashes instead of just skipping the file!

Thus I have to say this, DefragNT definitely don't hold a candle to JKDefrag. JKDefrag has a GUI while being just one file!

Edited by RJARRRPCGP
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  • 2 weeks later...
id recommend JKDefrag its free not a resource hog and its automatic also includes a screensaver defrag

http://www.kessels.nl/JkDefrag/index.html

While it is freeware and open-source, it's nothing spectacular and the basic display view is less than can be desired. I'm not even positive on what sort of file placement (if any) it does after simply defragmenting files.

I've recently realized the importance and necessity of having file placement done after a defrag. I have 3 screenshots that prove this, which anyone can do themselves.

Disk Analyzed

http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/9590/ud1dw5.png

Disk Defragmented Completely

http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/3064/ud2ag1.png

File Placement (79% of least used data placed on inner tracks and 21% of most used data placed on outer tracks + Consolidation defrag)

http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/418/ud3lc7.png

As you can see, merely having the files defragmented only does half the job. At this point there is still much room for future fragmentation and access time is nowhere near being optimized. And by optimized, I mean having files related by either last access or modification date placed together at the beginning of the HDD inwards.

Having the most used data at the beginning of the disk and the rest of the files out of the way on the slower areas of the disk improves file access time (truthfully by milliseconds, which in reality leads to several seconds of application and game loading).

Then comes the Consolidation method which places files sequentially and thus contiguously (no gaps in between any two given files). This creates the largest area of free space after the most used files for new files to be written. The file may or may not be fragmented when written to this free space, but it won't be fragmented nearly as much as it would be had it been written to a severely fragmented (and non-contiguous) drive where there were many gaps to fill.

Diskeeper is automatic and does file placement, but not always necessarily consolidated. You can defrag with any defragmenter and use UltimateDefrag to view the disk display and see exactly where and how files are placed.

PerfectDisk isn't as automatic, and does do file placement in the same manner, thus future fragmentation is reduced.

UltimateDefrag offers the most flexibility and shows a true drive display and is portable (1 EXE and 2 XML files on my flash drive).

I hope this helps.

Edited by Jeremy
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  • 4 weeks later...

i've used diskeeper and O&O side by side for a year and half now and I can confirm O&O is better in every way imaginable as far as defragging goes. O&O wipes the competetion.

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  • 4 weeks later...
...unlike others, it has its own mechanism to operate silently...

You're referring to automatic defragmentation, yes? If so, several other defragmenters have this ability. Ashampoo Magical Defrag 2, DirMS, Diskeeper 2007, MST Defrag, IOBit SmartDefrag, and O&O Defrag 8.6 and above.

I haven't tested these defragmenters in depth in regards to automatic defragmenting yet, but if I had to recommend 3 of them, I'd say DK, MST and O&O. There's only one way to know for sure, though... :yes:

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id recommend JKDefrag its free not a resource hog and its automatic also includes a screensaver defrag

http://www.kessels.nl/JkDefrag/index.html

While it is freeware and open-source, it's nothing spectacular and the basic display view is less than can be desired. I'm not even positive on what sort of file placement (if any) it does after simply defragmenting files.

I've recently realized the importance and necessity of having file placement done after a defrag. I have 3 screenshots that prove this, which anyone can do themselves.

Disk Analyzed

http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/9590/ud1dw5.png

Disk Defragmented Completely

http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/3064/ud2ag1.png

File Placement (79% of least used data placed on inner tracks and 21% of most used data placed on outer tracks + Consolidation defrag)

http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/418/ud3lc7.png

As you can see, merely having the files defragmented only does half the job. At this point there is still much room for future fragmentation and access time is nowhere near being optimized. And by optimized, I mean having files related by either last access or modification date placed together at the beginning of the HDD inwards.

Having the most used data at the beginning of the disk and the rest of the files out of the way on the slower areas of the disk improves file access time (truthfully by milliseconds, which in reality leads to several seconds of application and game loading).

Then comes the Consolidation method which places files sequentially and thus contiguously (no gaps in between any two given files). This creates the largest area of free space after the most used files for new files to be written. The file may or may not be fragmented when written to this free space, but it won't be fragmented nearly as much as it would be had it been written to a severely fragmented (and non-contiguous) drive where there were many gaps to fill.

Diskeeper is automatic and does file placement, but not always necessarily consolidated. You can defrag with any defragmenter and use UltimateDefrag to view the disk display and see exactly where and how files are placed.

PerfectDisk isn't as automatic, and does do file placement in the same manner, thus future fragmentation is reduced.

UltimateDefrag offers the most flexibility and shows a true drive display and is portable (1 EXE and 2 XML files on my flash drive).

I hope this helps.

There have been a major amount of JKDefrag releases!

Apparently, there has been work done on the file placing. The GUI still is the same, but hopefully, that can be improved.

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