Decent Defrag programs
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Can anyone recommend any decent defrag programs (I may even be prepared to pay for one, gasp!)
The one that comes with XP shows my fragmented drive, I leave it for a while and come back and it says it's finished but it still shows fragments everywhere! Also it doesn't move all the files up to leave a "CLEAN" bit of empty space which I know some programs do.
I basically need to get my Boot Drive more efficient as it's approaching full and its getting "grindy".
thanks!
Best one I've found is O&O Defrag Pro. It's not free, but it's fast and very good at it's job.
http://www.oo-software.com/home/en/products/oodefrag/ PerfectDisk - it is the best there is.
Perfect Disk/O&O Defrag/DisKeeper are commercial software with some special features like system file optimization, if you have budget it's worth trying.
These three mentioned above have memory-reside task manager, which may defrag in real time but may waste CPU time and cause HDD overuse(over frequently defrag).
A few freeware I used and suggest:
http://www.auslogics.com/disk-defrag/http://www.iobit.com/iobitsmartdefrag.htmlAnd even an Open Source one...
http://ultradefrag.sourceforge.net/As a side note that those free ones doesn't come with system file optimization or something, however in my real experience, I can't feel the difference.
According to the german IT magazine publishing house with still the best reputation, Heise, defragmentation programs for the NTFS file system basically make no sense at all - and some of them even make things worse instead of better. But it's been quite a while since they last reviewed software for that purpose, so maybe there is now something that does actually work.
In the days of FAT and FAT32, defragmentation made a difference. I never felt one on an NTFS drive, though. Save your money for something useful.
O&O is seriously a problem, broke my boot partition twice.
I use perfect disk.
And it makes sense due to Windows XPs incapability to do it itself (moving the bootfiles to the start of the partition, keeping the pagefile in one place on the disk and the like)
Speed gains of up to 30% so far
Thanks ALL!
I really DO notice a difference after a heavy defrag on my NTFS XP system.
Ah Perfect Disk, I think I used the trial of that once and it was great, may go that route again.
After defrag I believe it's a good idea to run BootVis which works out how to speed up OS boot times the best, then another degrag.
This is my work PC and crap performance costs me time and money (and is plain annoying) so spending a bit on a good defragger is worth it for me.
PerfectDisk. No contest.
defragmentation programs for the NTFS file system basically make no sense at all
Well they're wrong. Dead wrong. Sure if you have a sufficiently large RAID array (like 6+ discs), defragmentation is going to have less impact. Unless you've somehow managed to install Reiser4fs, regular defragmentation will give you a noticable performance boost.
Try Ultimate Boot CD, theres a range of defraggers on there
"Try Ultimate Boot CD, theres a range of defraggers on there"
Only problem is you have to a Windows XP (OEM/Retail, PC/laptop recovery disks are no good) install disk so you can create it.
But digging around UBCD site will/should tell you what defrag tools it uses.
The M$ implemented one needs a large chunk of free space on your drive to work with. One thing you can do is move some large files over to another drive, then defrag, then put them back.
Whatever you do: DO not use BootVIS unless you are an IT professional!
MS took the download offline due to the reason that it can break the whole partition under some different circumstances.
Windows XP / Vista defrag, btw, is a cut down version of a previous version of Perfect Disk
I don't like defragging drives. All that thrashing can't be good for them.
Contig with the Power Defragmenter GUI - it's free, it's fast and the best for Vista.
Dreamora: I used Bootvis before and it was fine = in fact it made a BIG diference. So I won't be able to get a download from MS, hmm will have to look elsewher?
TaskMaster: yeah I know, it moans if it doesn't have enough space. I find it weird how my one finishes but it hasn't done a proper job.
I don't like defragging drives. All that thrashing can't be good for them.
Yeah, but think about how much thrashing occurs everday if using an un-defragged disk.
I'm a big fan of
Ultimate Defrag.
Yeah I've already ensured my OS files are on the fasted bit because I partitioned my drive into two parts and stuck the OS on the faster bit :-)
One quick & easy one: contig
Freebie from sysinternals.com
Unlike most of the others, it's a command-line tool, and defrags on a file-by-file base. You can defrag any particular file you want, or your entire drive with:
contig * -s
The M$ implemented one needs a large chunk of free space on your drive to work with.
Not to mention it sucks. After 2 passes with the Microsoft defragmentation tool, my drive was still 3% fragmented. PerfectDisk cleared that one right up.
Windows XP / Vista defrag, btw, is a cut down version of a previous version of Perfect Disk
No it isn't.
Its a crippled version of Diskeeper
It's based on Diskeeper, which has caused controversie in the past. From Wikipedia:
The inclusion of the Diskeeper utility in Windows 2000 was the subject of controversy in Germany.[2] The CEO of Executive Software is an outspoken scientologist, and the German government has historically been skeptical of Scientology. Before endorsing Windows 2000 for use on German government servers, the Federal Office of Security in Information Technology (BSI) demanded Microsoft allow them to examine source code to determine that the software was not secretly monitoring and transmitting user data. The controversy was resolved when Microsoft published a utility that allowed users to remove Diskeeper if they chose.
(Note: the "german goverment being sceptical of scientology"-part is a bit of an understatement. It's not considerd a religion there, and members are actively prohibited from working for the goverment)
PerfectDisk owns.
Args sorry yeah correct. Thats what I used in the past until its single run defragmentation degraded to the point where I needed it to use 4 times ...
Gray Alien: That does not help the least. Anyone of us here is most likely using partitions etc.
but the actual place on the partition where the bootfiles and page files are makes a difference. Especially if the pagefile gets split up, the performance will degrade quite fast.
Not that noticable on desktop perhaps, but after beeing on notebooks only for 7 years I can say that you will suffer there of this kind of degrading very fast.
but the actual place on the partition where the bootfiles and page files are makes a difference. Especially if the pagefile gets split up, the performance will degrade quite fast.
...Which is why it's a good idea to set the page file to a fixed length, instead of the dynamic size or 'let windows determine'.
for those who do have a fragmented swap file:
1) Tell windows not to use a swapfile, and reboot.
2) defrag the drive
3) create a swapfile again, with a fixed length.
xlsior: good idea
If you ever teach Windows to follow that.
Because if it insists on it, it can extend it and gets fragmented due to that.
Happened often enough to me even thought I have 2GB of RAM and a 2GB Swap ...
Gray Alien: That does not help the least. Anyone of us here is most likely using partitions etc.
but the actual place on the partition where the bootfiles and page files are makes a difference. Especially if the pagefile gets split up, the performance will degrade quite fast.
Yes it does make a different. I have a 160GB drive and I've got a 40GB partition on the fast part (start of drive is twice as fast as end of drive) - so the partition is in the fatest 25%. All my OS files/drivers and apps are on that partition as well as a large single file Swap File. This is nice and fast (except now it needs a defrag). All my data is on the slower 2nd half. (Actually I also have another drive partitioned in the same manner, and the fast bit is for performance games and the slow bit is for backups.)
xlsior: Yeah basically I've been doing that for years. It's an essential tip.
for those who do have a fragmented swap file:
Or alternateively, run PerfectDisk. An offline defrag at reboot should set you right up, defraging the swap file, and any other system files used by Windows.
It really is the best thing ever invented.
I don't like defragging drives. All that thrashing can't be good for them.
They thrash a lot more in the long run when they have to seek all over the place :)
The more often you defrag the less stressful the defrag when you run the defragger to remove the frags.
(now say that again fast!) :P
I run mine at mabe 1 (or 2) month intervals. Quite often the analyser says its not needed.
Only problem is you have to a Windows XP (OEM/Retail, PC/laptop recovery disks are no good) install disk so you can create it.
But digging around UBCD site will/should tell you what defrag tools it uses.
No idea about that, i simply downloaded the ubcd.iso from cnet or somewhere and burned the disk, works great :/