Defrag

[NickTech]

Hi,
I am having aproblem with XP defrag, i initially defragged a machine that required it. Yet after it was finished i anaylsed it again and it stated that it required defragging!

I reset the system restore and tried again and it looked like it did a bit better job. However my user has complained that this hasnt aided speed issues and when anaylsed defrag once again states that it requires run!

Anybody know where i can downloaded something else such as Norton Defrag? Or some freeware that i can try?

Any tips appreciated..

Nick

 

[odiumragnarok]

Windows defragmenter is kinda lame. Try Diskeeper.

 

[bcastner]

First, the XP utility while not as easy to use as third-party tools does a very decent job. The problem is the "myth" surrounding performance gains from defragmentation. They are quite modest. PC World tested defrag tools from Suites, stand-alone such as DiskKeeper, and the native XP defrag tools and concluded:

"When the PC World Test Center set out to determine the effectiveness of the defrag utilities in our set of suites, plus that of Diskeeper 8 from Executive Software, our analysts found no evidence that defragmentation enhanced performance. On a desktop system from the PC World office with a heavily used, never-defragmented hard drive, the lab conducted speed tests using a range of applications before and after defragmenting the drive with each utility. In the end, the Test Center saw no significant performance improvement after defragmenting with any program. This result flies in the face of the received wisdom that fragmentation hinders performance, though much older PCs (with slower and smaller hard drives) and heavily used servers may benefit more from defragging.

Fortunately, you don't have to buy a defragger to see if it will boost performance on your system: Every copy of Windows comes with a defragmentation tool. However, it is not particularly easy to use. Diskeeper 8 Professional Edition offers set-it-and-forget-it scheduling options, the ability to prioritize or skip defragmentation of specific files, and a display that predicts how much faster your system will be after defragmentation. Our tests didn't validate those predictions, though; again, we saw no performance gains after defragmenting."

http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,113743,pg,8,00.asp

See also:

http://www.techbuilder.org/article.htm?ArticleID=47626

Defrag choices and notes

. Some freeware choices:

http://www.jam-software.com/freeware/

. Some notes:

. Use the native XP defrag command line tool in Safe Mode for best results, rather than the Windows GUI defrag utility.

. The Microsoft standard for XP on NTFS volumes is a loose, not tightly packed, defrag. For FAT32 the native utility will do a tight defrag. Third-party defrag tools offer as the default the Microsoft loose degrag, and several offer as an option a tight defrag if you so choose. There is little or no performance gains from a tight defrag with NTFS.

 

[odiumragnarok]

Something you need to know, Nicktech,

The built-in Windows XP defragmenter is a "lite" version of an earlier release of Diskeeper 8.0 Professional Edition ($45.95 direct). Like the built-in defragger, Diskeeper is designed to defragment in multiple passes. Rather than striving for 100 percent defragmentation, it simply aims to improve performance.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1585343,00.asp

 

[bcastner]

I would be remiss if I did not mention Sysinternals freeware Contig utility:

http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/contig.shtml

And their utility to defragment pagefiles:

http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/pagedefrag.shtml

Also, this claim may border on an urban myth:

The built-in Windows XP defragmenter is a "lite" version of an earlier release of Diskeeper 8.0 Professional Edition.

Executive Software had a source code license to the operating system and patched the os kernal. This caused all sorts of problems as they really weren't supposed to replace the OS kernal ... End result was that if MS released a sp/hotfix, it would break executives stuff or ever worse, corrupt data.

What ended up happening is that MS and ES got together and said "this isn't working very well. What can we do". End result is that ES worked with MS on the defrag API specifications (how to call, what information to return) and MS actually wrote the defrag APIs.

How this got translated into the urban myth that it is - who knows. The fact that ES tells people that they wrote them probably has something to do with it

In regards to the built-in defragmenter under Win2k. At the time that Win2k was in development YEARS before it was released, there really was only 1 player in the defrag market for NT - ES. That's why MS partnered with ES to include a stripped down version in the operating system. In regards to WinXP, ES helped to write the built-in defragmenter - to MS' specifications. MS has sole control/ownership of the code and over future direction of the built-in defragmenter.

- Greg/Raxco Software (Makers of Perfect Disk)