Best Defrag Software For Vista ???

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shaggymcp

Gawd
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Jul 23, 2002
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Hey just looking for suggestions on what is the best software to use to do a good, yet quick defrag for windows vista.

Thx for any suggestions :D
 
Vista isn't like any other version of Windows that's come before. Really, there's no need for 3rd party defragging tools anymore. I've torn my Vista install to pieces recently, installed stuff, installed more stuff, uninstalled stuff, installed more, moved shit around, copied entire DVDs to the system partition, removed files, done all sorts of stuff to that system partition that most people don't do in a month or even a year's time (casual users), and then I ran the default defragger and it wasn't even 1% fragmented.

I confirmed that with PerfectDisk 8 which I had installed in a portable environment (runs off a USB stick) as well as O&O and Auslogic's free defraggers - they all agreed the system partition was just under 1% fragmented, which is good enough for me.

Just because I can't see all the blocks of data flying around when I run the default defragger doesn't mean the built-in one loses points. I spent decades caring about such things and now I look back on all the wasted minutes, hours, days, weeks, etc... it's just not relevant anymore.

Vista is a self-tuning OS not like any other ever made. It can handle itself just fine.

But if you've just gotta see those colored blocks flying around, PerfectDisk 8 or UltimateDefrag would be the recommendations I'll offer. The built-in one works just fine, but even so, Vista rarely needs a defrag anymore.
 
thx for the advice, and ill try out the defaut for a while, but if I feel the need to see flying blocks ;) ill check out one of the others you mentioned :D

Thx
 
The only thing they really *SHOULD* have included with the Vista defragger is some kind of progress/status bar, that's just a given. Not including that one simple aspect is probably the biggest gripe of all even if it's doing the job. We all love progress/status bars, it's just a confirmation that something is actually happening. :)
 
I use perfect disk,I agree that u dont need to defrag often, unless u install alot of programs at once.
 
same here. Vista does seem fairly well self maintining, but I still use Raxco Perfect Disc. ( I like the boot defrag ) also, Raxco helps with the smart placement feature.
 
Diskeeper 2007, with InvisiTasking, works quite well on Vista.
 
Call me old school, but I still like to have control over my HDDs fragmentation.....I use PerfectDisc Rx :cool:
 
I have PerfectDisk installed under XP x64 presently. Been doing some testing with UltimateDefrag for which I had some really high hopes but I'm getting a bit disappointed in. Supposedly it offers something no other defragger ever has before: total and absolute control over what goes where, so literally I'm supposed to be able to place a specific file anywhere I want on the platters.

So for example, if I wanted my mIRC.exe file to be the very first file on the hard drive after the $BOOT sector, I can do it. But in my experience with using it (the Help file and the included PDF both leave a lot of things unexplained and give generalized answers where specifics are needed), I was never able to actually get that .exe file specifically where I wanted it.

It has many options, and supposedly another option is placing entire directories where you want (outer edges are faster, so obviously placing commonly accessed directories and files like \Windows would benefit from this) or just .exe and .dll files (increases the speed at which applications and their libraries could/should load), but again, in my experience, it just doesn't live up to its hype.

I did a "High Performance" defrag using UD that should have placed all the .exe and .dll files on the outer edges of the drive. After the defrag pass was done, respecting the "High Performance" settings that I had chosen (aka move only .exe and .dll files to the outer edges or the beginning of the hard drive itself), I was shocked when I went back and looked at the sector content after the pass:

It was everything but .exe and .dll files, and that immediately disappointed me. In fact, I had to go almost quite a ways into the platter before I found an .exe file, and then I found another and another, but they most certainly were not where I'd planned to have them. I re-ran the "High Performance" pass again and it didn't make any alterations to the already done layout - the .exe files and .dll files didn't move any closer to the actual beginning of the drive, so I was a bit baffled by that.

I had such high hopes for UltimateDefrag, but my honest opinion at this point is it's hot air regardless of what the docs or the PDF file say. I used PerfectDisk 8 after I uninstalled UD 1.54 and then ran a single SmartPlacement and it completed in about 9 minutes - and that was moving all the low priority files from the center/back end of the hard drive where UD had put them all into a contiguous block at the beginning of the drive also. The entire UD "High Performance" operation took well over 35 minutes - and I didn't notice anywhere near the snappiness and responsiveness with that "High Performance" pass as I did with the single PerfectDisk SmartPlacement pass.

UD has possibility, I'll give it that, but until it actually does what it claims to do, I'll never recommend it unless you're just toying around and learning how it's supposed to work.

For Windows versions prior to Vista, PerfectDisk is still the king and my most solid recommendation. For Vista, I don't have a third party defrag tool to suggest - Vista does it just as well as any of them and really, it doesn't even need manual defragging, ever, not even in the most strenuous situations with tons of file copy/move/delete activity.

Just my $.02 and a lot of change...
 
Good post Ghost. I was going to start a thread asking whether defraggers actually work at all. I have tried all the major defraggers for both Vista & XP and I swear my system runs much slower regardless of which brand I use. Anyone else feel the same way?
 
With Diskeeper and O&O in testing, I didn't notice any difference in how the system felt when in operation - but that's not something you can measure, it's a personal thing and in all my years I've become really hypersensitive to any and all delays on a system - especially when I know how long it should take to do something.

PerfectDisk on XP (and 2K) is the only defragger that's actually caused a noticeable difference in the overall responsiveness of the system to me. There really is no adequate and repeatable way to test for the usefulness of a defragger anymore, I don't think there ever has been, really.

But that's the only one that when it's finished I can feel a difference in how snappy and responsive the system is, and when I load software I can tell precisely when it's going to load almost with my eyes closed.

Yeah, I'm a geek. Sue me... :)

I really had high high hopes for UltimateDefrag, though. Maybe they'll get it right as time goes by. It just has the possibility for literally being the "ultimate" defragger just based on what it should be able to do; unfortunately it just doesn't do it, yet.

But again with Vista: I've trashed the system partition with 40,000 files of various sizes, delete, move, copy, copy, move, delete, big files, small files, etc. No matter what I do to that thing and no matter how long I do it, Vista's defragger and the 3 others I use for testing all agree: less than 1-2% fragmentation regardless of my attempts to totally pooch that partition. Under XP a similar bashing would result in 20-30% fragmentation in no time at all. Vista just goes right through it like a hot knife through butter. Absolutely astonishing...
 
Mechanical hard drives have much better sequential than random read performance, and defragmenting a drive keeps the files contiguous (and thus offers better performance). NCQ alleviates this somewhat, but for the most part you might not notice any significant performance gain during everyday use from either (fragmented files tend not to have huge gaps). Defragmenting is more about reliability than performance - your hard drives will simply last longer if you keep them defragged. In the long-term, the drive will have to exert less effort, and this directly correlates to its lifespan.
 
I look at it at a recovery point of view, keep your file in one piece then odds are you can recover it in one piece.

The more fragmented the bigger the jigsaw gets when you run a recovery programme of any kind.
 
XBarbarian said:
same here. Vista does seem fairly well self maintining, but I still use Raxco Perfect Disc. ( I like the boot defrag ) also, Raxco helps with the smart placement feature.
Click to expand...

You ever noticed any improvement after smart placement? I never did, and that's on XP. I have Perfectdisk and Diskeeper but don't waste my time with them any more. Their wild claims of performance increase are snake oil. If I had to though I would take Perfectdisk over Diskeeper as they don't spam me once a week at my Hotmail address. Kind of funny that Diskeeper makes it through my junk filter in Hotmail no matter how many times I put them there. Oh, right, Diskeeper provided Microsoft with the built in defrag technology. :/
 
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