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Good HDD Defrag Programs

D

darkflames

Gawd
Joined
Dec 30, 2006
Messages
738
Would the windows defrag built into windows work or should i just get a seperate program and use it? If so, what are some good programs that defrag a harddrive.
 
If you're running Vista, you don't need a third party defragger, period. Vista will handle all the defrag duties on low priority as required. In 6 months of using Vista in the first half of 2007, and never installing a third party defragger, no matter what I did to the primary system partition I had resulted in a near constant < 5% fragmentation level.

I even purposely tried to put 20K+ picture files on it, delete some of 'em, put even more on it, over and over again, copy, delete, copy delete, etc leaving tiny small holes all over the place, then copying big files like VOBs from DVDs to that hard drive knowing the large files would get fragmented to hell and back because they'd need to be torn apart instead of contiguous as the holes I'd created were filled.

Boy was I wrong. Vista does defrag duties in the background on low priority as required to maintain a sub-5% fragmentation level. Pretty amazing stuff, and I never could get it past that point - it actually stayed well under 2% most of time.

If you're running XP or 2K, Perfect Disk is probably the one I'd recommend for speed and completion ability - meaning it can almost always get a drive to 0% fragmentation in one pass, and pretty quickly too. Defraggler, a free one, is rather simplistic but does a damned good job of straight defragmentation as well, so it's an option. Very tiny, efficient, but not nearly as fast as Perfect Disk.

But hey, it's free.

jkDefrag is another excellent free one as well, and highly recommended to testing.

The rest? Meh... not worth even installing them to be honest, but that's my opinion.
 
Use O&O defrag. It's the best for windows! Really just try it and you'll see!!!!
 
Ugh, I just tried out O&O 10 and it's pretty bloaty. I recommend version 8.5 for defragging bliss.
 
another vote for if you have vista you dont need jack, i would love to see the performance gains other gets when they use 3rd party apps under vista.

Xp, thas another story.
 
O&O Defrag user here. Been using it for years, I loved it so much I actually paid for Version 10! I use it on all of my drives and love it. Never had an issue. I don't see how it's "bloaty" at all...it's fast and has very advanced algorithms.
 
If you're using any OS other than Vista, I recommend PerfectDisk. If you're using Vista, it self-defrags as required, so... leave it alone.
 
I use Diskeeper and Vopt9. I really wanted to like PerfectDisk, but it always borked by system
and was very slow, for me that is. Maybe I will try it again.
 
Just switched to Ultimate Defrag (from Perfect Disk 7).

The advantage is not simply faster defragging (it is faster), but very broad flexibility in defrag methods and flexible placement of files/folders/archives for best access strategy.

You can, for example optimize simply based on access-recency, prioritize .EXE and .DLL files placement, boost performance of a game by moving the game folder to the outer rings, etc.

None of these optimization choices require running background processes. Most recent access information is automatically updated from Windows Layout.ini when you run UD (just check 'Request Layout.ini' in options.

It's a tweaker's delight.

The rich range of options is a bit intimidating, but help and tutorial pdfs are genuinely helpful.

Beyond the technology advantages, the disk view is a gas - displaying HD ring structure instead of a rectangular-block display.

Good stuff!
 
Well, I did a test of Diskeeper 2009, the latest PerfectDisk and Vopt9 and Vopt9 completely kicked the other 2 guys @ss! I have 3 mirrored drives (I know, I have too many drives!)
and I defragged with Diskeeper, and STILL had a fragmented drive! Then I tried the new PerfectDisk, and after letting it run OVERNIGHT it was only 27% complete when I woke up!
I am sure it is a good program, but this slow performance has plagued me with every single version, and the newest version seems to be the slowest.
Then I tried Vopt9, and after a short 1hr 40mins my 2TB Raid 0 array was completely defragged! I even tested the results with Diskeeper and PerfectDisk, and they BOTH
said I had 0 fragmentation from the Vopt9 run! I am sure the PerfectDisk SmartPlacement had something to do with the slow defrag times, but I don't have DAYS to wait for this
program to defrag. I am still testing all these programs, but Vopt9 appears to be the fastest
and most thorough program to me. The GUI or interface is not pretty, but over the years I have learned that the the best programs sometimes have the most basic face, hopefully that means that the priority has been put into the PERFORMANCE and not the face!
 
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