Best defrag software?

halluc1nati0n said:
hmm .. Never knew the Windows Defrag was good..
Honestly, I believe only ppl who do not know that there are 3rd party apps for defragmenting HDDs / ppl who do not have internet access use the inbuilt defragmenter....
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Or people who get sick of crappy online and crappy third party ones crashing who keep their drives extreemly anally organized use something that came free and does a decent job at it. :p

Back in older versions of windows I used third party ones but XP's does a decent enough job of it that I dont feel the need to rush out and buy a utility just for defragging.
 
Master_Pain said:
The clusters on the outskirts of the hard drive are faster than the clusters on the inside of the hard drive. UltimateDefrag lets you move stuff from the outside to the inside for storage and stuff that you don't use very often. Then you can move all your games and your Windows installation to the outside clusters for faster performance.
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Thanks, going to try it out
 
Nenu said:
It defrags free space after defragmenting the files.
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I think you means it consolidates free space after defragmenting the files. Free space has nothing to defrag. It just consolidates the free space so that it is contiguous, which is really of no benefit on XP and Vista because the OS is continually moving files in and out of free space so having free space in various areas may actually be a benefit and not detriment because it doesn't have to move the files as far away. I use Auslogics defrag purely because it is a lot faster than the defrag built into the OS but I don't have any expectations of it making a noticeable improvement in performance.
 
milkweg said:
I think you means it consolidates free space after defragmenting the files. Free space has nothing to defrag. It just consolidates the free space so that it is contiguous, which is really of no benefit on XP and Vista because the OS is continually moving files in and out of free space so having free space in various areas may actually be a benefit and not detriment because it doesn't have to move the files as far away. I use Auslogics defrag purely because it is a lot faster than the defrag built into the OS but I don't have any expectations of it making a noticeable improvement in performance.
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Hmm, no I mean that free space can get fragmented and that it can be defragmented.
If you choose to use different words, fine but it means the same thing so I appreciate if you dont split hairs.

I agree that some free space fragmentation occurs by the OS but, for example, those save games that are created in the My Documents folder get less fragmentation when the free space isnt as fragmented and thus savegames load faster when free space has been "defragmented".

To further qualify what I have said, when Defraggler has finished defragging the data, it says this
"Defragging Freespace"
It doesnt say "Consolidating Freespace" :rolleyes:
 
"Consolidating Freespace" is technically correct. The only type of correct. Your program is wrong.
 
Placebo Defrag is the best!

Honestly, I don't know. I've used several. Windows Defrag (which is generally slow like molasses), O&O which was faster but I didn't really notice much performance improvement. Diskeeper, which is alright I guess. Now I am using Perfect Disk 2008 which seems to be working well. I haven't tried any of the smaller guys yet but who knows, maybe I'll get bored.
 
Nenu said:
To further qualify what I have said, when Defraggler has finished defragging the data, it says this
"Defragging Freespace"
It doesnt say "Consolidating Freespace" :rolleyes:
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Yea, well, I am splitting hairs because they not really using the correct nomenclature. In any defrag program that knows what they are talking about it is called 'consolidating free space' but I guess defragmenting free space means the same thing so will leave it at that. And it is basically a worthless process, IMO. Defragging is highly overrated and you are getting bent out of shape over something that is of minor benefit. Those 3rd party defrag programs that claim they will make your system fast are using snake oil techniques to sell you progs you don't need to spend any money on.
 
+1 for Disktrix Ultimate Defrag.

I bought this after reading about it in this thread and it is pretty good. You can let it automatically defrag your computer or you can customise it to suit your systems role, ie gaming, office pc, etc. Small program (only 2mb or so). Boot times are quicker albeit not by a huge amount and applications open faster. It's great how you can elect where the files and folders are physically located on your HDD. Great software for tweakers that love to optimize their system as much as possible. I have windows stored right on the outer limits of the HDD where the seek times are fastest, followed by regularly used programs, exe & dll files. On my other hard drive where I store my games, I have just consolidated all of the data to the outer limits with the exes at the start of the drive. I have moved all the video files to the inside of the HDD. It keeps everything neat and tidy.. I like it :D
 
Reading the Disktrix website is like watching an infomercial on late night TV.

FACT...
“Speed Up Your Hard Drive
And Your PC Performance Soars”

This Unique Product Will Speed Up Your Hard Drive Like No Other Product Can.
It's NOT just a defragger... more specifically, it's a hard drive file placement optimizer.

After You Defrag & Optimize With UltimateDefrag...
You Won't Believe The Newfound PC Performance You'll Experience!

FREE BONUS SOFTWARE GIVEAWAY WITH ANY ULTIMATEDEFRAG PURCHASE
FOR A LIMITED TIME ONLY

100% "No Questions Asked" Money Back Satisfaction Guarantee.
If you are unsatisfied with your purchase simply contact us within 30 days for a full 100% refund - no questions asked.

There's a sucker born every minute.
 
milkweg said:
Reading the Disktrix website is like watching an infomercial on late night TV.

FACT...
“Speed Up Your Hard Drive
And Your PC Performance Soars”

This Unique Product Will Speed Up Your Hard Drive Like No Other Product Can.
It's NOT just a defragger... more specifically, it's a hard drive file placement optimizer.

After You Defrag & Optimize With UltimateDefrag...
You Won't Believe The Newfound PC Performance You'll Experience!

FREE BONUS SOFTWARE GIVEAWAY WITH ANY ULTIMATEDEFRAG PURCHASE
FOR A LIMITED TIME ONLY

100% "No Questions Asked" Money Back Satisfaction Guarantee.
If you are unsatisfied with your purchase simply contact us within 30 days for a full 100% refund - no questions asked.

There's a sucker born every minute.
Click to expand...

Actually, theres a free trial of it, try it out and mess around with the features. If you do it correctly, it actually makes quite a large difference.
 
milkweg said:
Reading the Disktrix website is like watching an infomercial on late night TV.

FACT...
“Speed Up Your Hard Drive
And Your PC Performance Soars”

This Unique Product Will Speed Up Your Hard Drive Like No Other Product Can.
It's NOT just a defragger... more specifically, it's a hard drive file placement optimizer.

After You Defrag & Optimize With UltimateDefrag...
You Won't Believe The Newfound PC Performance You'll Experience!

FREE BONUS SOFTWARE GIVEAWAY WITH ANY ULTIMATEDEFRAG PURCHASE
FOR A LIMITED TIME ONLY

100% "No Questions Asked" Money Back Satisfaction Guarantee.
If you are unsatisfied with your purchase simply contact us within 30 days for a full 100% refund - no questions asked.

There's a sucker born every minute.
Click to expand...

You're right about it sounding like a cheesy late night infomercial but I am still happy with my purchase. If it didnt do what I was expecting then I would have simply got my refund! No questions asked :p

I guess I am a sucker.. But I am a happy sucker!
 
I have been using Diskeeper Professional for a number of years and thought it was great. But after reading about some of the useful features from Ultimate Defrag, I decided to give it a try.

For my windows/gaming HD I chose to run the consolidate option and manually set the windows folder and all my gaming folders to "high performance" which made the program move them to the outside of the disk for faster access. After I ran it, I booted up some of my games and noticed an immediate difference on a few. There was a dramatic difference in Oblivion. The game used to stutter before. Even after I defragged with Diskeeper. I run the game at 1600x1200, max in game settings, no self shadow or grass shadow, HDR, 16x AF (Nvidia control panel), etc. I also have Qarl's texture pack and a bunch of other visual upgrade addons. The game now runns pretty smooth, it occassionaly stutters when I first go into an area with a lot of trees, but other than that, my FPS stays around 50.

With a CPU upgrade I'm sure my performance would improve even further.

I REALLY like the visual representation of the disk that Ultimate Defrag uses. I'm not sure if it's 100% accurate to what is actually going on in the HD, but it still looks cool and gives you and idea of what it's doing. You can even click on the individual "boxes" and see what files are contained in that section of the HD.

The presentation is really slick and it noticeably improved performance on my system. I will continue to use it from now on.

FYI: The built in XP defragger is Diskeeper version 6 will all the additional features stripped out. So it's decent, but no where near as good as 3rd party defraggers.
 
maverick777 said:
I have been using Diskeeper Professional for a number of years and thought it was great. But after reading about some of the useful features from Ultimate Defrag, I decided to give it a try.

For my windows/gaming HD I chose to run the consolidate option and manually set the windows folder and all my gaming folders to "high performance" which made the program move them to the outside of the disk for faster access. After I ran it, I booted up some of my games and noticed an immediate difference on a few. There was a dramatic difference in Oblivion. The game used to stutter before. Even after I defragged with Diskeeper. I run the game at 1600x1200, max in game settings, no self shadow or grass shadow, HDR, 16x AF (Nvidia control panel), etc. I also have Qarl's texture pack and a bunch of other visual upgrade addons. The game now runns pretty smooth, it occassionaly stutters when I first go into an area with a lot of trees, but other than that, my FPS stays around 50.

With a CPU upgrade I'm sure my performance would improve even further.

I REALLY like the visual representation of the disk that Ultimate Defrag uses. I'm not sure if it's 100% accurate to what is actually going on in the HD, but it still looks cool and gives you and idea of what it's doing. You can even click on the individual "boxes" and see what files are contained in that section of the HD.

The presentation is really slick and it noticeably improved performance on my system. I will continue to use it from now on.

FYI: The built in XP defragger is Diskeeper version 6 will all the additional features stripped out. So it's decent, but no where near as good as 3rd party defraggers.
Click to expand...

Dont forget to get your free upgrade to Ultimate Defrag 2008 when it is released later this month :D
 
mr_zen256 said:
You're right about it sounding like a cheesy late night infomercial but I am still happy with my purchase. If it didnt do what I was expecting then I would have simply got my refund! No questions asked :p

I guess I am a sucker.. But I am a happy sucker!
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OK, so long as you are happy it is all good. I'll stick with my **FREE** Auslogics Defrag even if they do only give to to you for free in the hopes you will buy their PC Optimizer software. The Defrag software tells you randomly after a defrag that your PC needs optimizing and when you click it it takes you to their website to purchase PC Optimizer software. Me, not being a sucker, knows that my PC doesn't need optimizing and won't be purchasing PC Optimizer any time soon. From what I read about it it does no more than the **FREE** CCleaner anyway.
 
Wow I never knew the real purpose of defragging HD until I came upon this thread. (yes googled afterwards)

Q:

By 'outside', you mean anything that's not inside the default "c:\" correct? So, for best performance, you want to put anything you use frequently 'outside' (including program files and Windows folders?) and put storage files (ie. video, picture, mp3, etc..) inside?

PS. How often do you guys usually run defrag? Is once a week more than enough?
 
Purostaff said:
Wow I never knew the real purpose of defragging HD until I came upon this thread. (yes googled afterwards)

Q:

By 'outside', you mean anything that's not inside the default "c:\" correct? So, for best performance, you want to put anything you use frequently 'outside' (including program files and Windows folders?) and put storage files (ie. video, picture, mp3, etc..) inside?

PS. How often do you guys usually run defrag? Is once a week more than enough?
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correct, I put my games and windows on the outside. Then i put my programs and storage on the inside, I don't care about programs loading fast, this rig is games performance.
 
I tried Ultimate Defragger overnight for fun on my desktop and laptop. The desktop is Vista 64bit and the lappy is 32bit. The lappy ran it fine. The desktop I had to run it in admin mode to get it to work. Left them overnight. The lappy was done and it shut down a lot quicker than normal (good sign) while the desktop was semi frozen on one of the drives. It was responsive but it stopped half way on my D: drive. It hung the shutdown and I had to do a hard powerdown holding the on switch for a few.

Anything I missed for running it in 64bit Vista or was this just a fluke? After work I plan on giving that one drive another go and to see if both machines are noticibly quicker on the boot up.
 
Master_Pain said:
correct, I put my games and windows on the outside. Then i put my programs and storage on the inside, I don't care about programs loading fast, this rig is games performance.
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Sorry for another nub question, but the only thing I could find that is 'outside' of my c:\ drive is desktop. Is there anything else that I'm not aware? I thought 'my document' was outside at first, but it's actually found within c:\
 
When they are talking about “outside” and “inside” they mean the physical disk platter inside the hard drive with outside being the farthest away from the middle and inside being really close to the middle.
 
how does disktrix work on raid0 arrays? I mean, the 'outside' of a raid0 array is virtual, so how would disktrix work on one?
 
sumofatguy said:
how does disktrix work on raid0 arrays? I mean, the 'outside' of a raid0 array is virtual, so how would disktrix work on one?
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It seems to work fine on mine. I noticed a big difference when i ordered my games to the outskirts.
 
Numan said:
When they are talking about “outside” and “inside” they mean the physical disk platter inside the hard drive with outside being the farthest away from the middle and inside being really close to the middle.
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Also the faster "outside" of the physical platter is assigned first (C partition) and goes inwards (slower) with the higher partitions. Could cause some confusion since you would think the outside would be the last section shown in the partition/defrag software, and it's not. :p

I have never thought about using a primary C partition for games, and D for the operating system. Probably wouldn't be worth the drawbacks unless you had a small gaming partition since applications would be more frustrating if they open slowly. Although, doesn't Vista preload common applications into the RAM? Could be a nice setup to play around with.
 
Nixed Auslogics defrag. I have switched to Defragler and like it better because it allows you to select fragmented files and just defrag the files of your choice.
 
milkweg said:
Nixed Auslogics defrag. I have switched to Defragler and like it better because it allows you to select fragmented files and just defrag the files of your choice.
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Agreed, great feature.
 
Ultimate Defrag 2008 is out, not quite sure what the difference is, except a new skin on it.
 
Master_Pain said:
Ultimate Defrag 2008 is out, not quite sure what the difference is, except a new skin on it.
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Here's the changelog from the site:

IMPROVEMENTS

*

Reprogrammed and recoded from scratch.

*

New Custom Graphical User Interface.

*

Vastly accelerated and more intelligent Defrag engine. Includes new defrag and file placement techniques that result in faster file placement and less data moved

• Nearest free space placement for scratch files
• Pre-emptive space clearing
• Minimal file movement
• Better fitting of files for free space
• Very fast file placement leaves a few gaps for the benefit of a much faster defrag.
• Added Consolidate and Very Fast File Placement for High Performance Files and Archive Files resulting in much faster defrag times for HP and archive files.
• Added very fast file placement for consolidate defrag method

*

Additional file selection options include

• Wildcard file selection
• Ability to select HP and Archive based upon absolute data, percentage of data and days since use.
• Ability to sort or consolidate HP and archive files
• Additional File selection options enable over 200 file selection/defrag option permutations

*

Added more information to GUI

• File progress indicator updates as file data is being moved
• HP and Archive bands differentiated in their own color enabling user to see which files are being placed in archive, HP or normal zones.

*

Added functionality to Auto defrag method enabling user to please least used files to inner tracks or inside regular data.

*

Removed boot time defrag option to make way for very powerful and flexible boot time defrag utility which will be provided free of charge to all V2.XX owners by end of June 2008. Current version of boot time defrag module was rudimentary and mostly ineffectual.

Future boot time defrag module will have option to:

• Defrag and Specifically place MFT in optimal location on drive based upon "center of data" distribution.
• Defrag and specifically place paging file in optimal location on drive based upon "center of data" distribution.
• Defrag and optimize placement of all NTFS metafiles
• Reindex, pack and optimize MFT to eliminate MFT slack.
• Other, yet unpublished functionality.

Boot time module will be provided FREE of charge to all users.
 
UltimateDefrag worked great on my 32-bit machines, but on my Vista 64-bit machine it did all sorts of funky stuff.

On my 32-bit machines I could make it so all my junk files, archives, rarely used, etc were on the inside tracks, and all my games and Windows was on the outside tracks. Also, programs were actually placed in order.

On my 64-bit machine the best I can describe it is that all my files were randomly scattered around the drive. It wouldn't follow any of the rules I set down like it did on the 32-bit machines.

I've sent e-mails to Disktrix regarding that and never got a satisfactory reply. I've also recently asked if the new UltimateDefrag 2008 version will work correctly on Vista 64-bit and have yet to get a reply.

The documentation says it supports all versions of Vista, but so did the old version.

So I will not be upgrading to the new version until I hear that it's working correctly.
 
+1 for Ultimate Defrag (surprisingly).

been a staunch advocate of "Just use the goddam windows one", but I tried out Ultimate Defrag, put my Age of Conan files at the very outer edge of my drive and saw a HUGE improvement in loading times (1-2 mins to 5-10 seconds... on average).

Just wanted to throw my few cents out there, that said, its still "target specific". If Age of Conan wasn't a 30GB monster with big loading times, I wouldn't notice a change at all. Example: Medieval 2 is right after AoC and I noticed no change between pre and post "improvement"... actually it played the same as before I ran a regular defrag and changed from 60% fragmented (yes I have been lazy). And yes I tested AoC between the defrag and the "file placement".
 
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