Opinions on Free Defraggers

[MasterRacker]

I'm cleaning up a XP notebook I inherited. I've never felt the built-in defragger did a thorough job. Between Piriform Defraggler and IOBit SmartDefrag which would you say does a better job? Is there another option that blows these two away?

Jeff
[small][purple]It's never too early to begin preparing for [/purple]International Talk Like a Pirate Day
"The software I buy sucks, The software I write sucks. It's time to give up and have a beer..." - Me[/small]

 

[wolluf]

I've never yet seen any significant improvement in performance from defragging ntfs filestore. As far as I can see it just takes time and resources, and occasionally causes a problem.

just my 2p

 

[2ffat]

I've not used those two but I do use JKDefrag GUI.


James P. Cottingham
[sup]I'm number 1,229!
I'm number 1,229![/sup]

 

[tomw0]

How about Diskkeeper Lite and Auslogics are two to look at. I've used both.
tom

 

[Turkbear]

Hi,
I agree with wolluf,
defragging is rarely needed these days ( NTFS handles things quite well) and, in some rare cases,it can cause issues.

But, for more info on using it and its relation to performance, this seems like a good article:

http://www.crn.com/news/channel-pro...;jsessionid=n49tjTCZ9SVJ6Q3iqIb2aA**.ecappj01

To Paraphrase:"The Help you get is proportional to the Help you give.."

 

[MasterRacker]

I would agree that constant defragging is useless and defragging in general is overblown, but I do think it's useful on a machine that's seen heavy use for months or years.

Fragmented data files are no issue but the OS and applications will fragment over time as hundreds of SPs, patches, hotfixes, etc. go in, swapping files around, etc. I think it's a good idea to clean that up infrequently (yearly?)

Also, Turkbear's article points out that there are other benefits beside simple speed increases.



Jeff
[small][purple]It's never too early to begin preparing for [/purple]International Talk Like a Pirate Day
"The software I buy sucks, The software I write sucks. It's time to give up and have a beer..." - Me[/small]

 

[goombawaho]

Agreed - 9 out of 10 computers that I check (analyze) for fragmentation report that they don't need defagmenting. I guess the ones that say they do REALLY need it.

If it hasn't been done for a year or you have recently deleted a bunch of data, those would be times to pursue it.

 

[tcsbiz]

I'm curious. Under what conditions can defragging cause problems?

 

[BadBigBen]

I'm curious. Under what conditions can defragging cause problems?

when you have a damaged drive (cluster damage) or experience a power loss during operation...

there are probably other reasons as well...

Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[cdogg]

How about Diskkeeper Lite...

The built-in XP Disk Defragmenter is actually based off of Diskeeper:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314848

Fragmentation was a major concern back in the days of Windows 95/98/ME running the FAT16 or FAT32 file system. Unlike both, NTFS is more resistent to serious fragmentation. It can still occur but rarely is there a need to defragment for the sake of improving performance. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if the average hard drive wears out mechanically long before fragmentation becomes a serious factor. I'd say avoid it unless fragmentation is creeping beyond 25-30%.

I honestly can't remember the last time I used that feature on NTFS, or even when it made any noticeable difference.

Carl

"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test
a man's character, give him power." - Abraham Lincoln
[tab][navy]For this site's posting policies, click [/navy]here.

 

[strongm]

>a power loss during operation

Certainly a problem with older FAT defraggers, but almost every single NTFS defrag tool (free or otherwise) uses the NTFS defrag API, which is crash-resistant.

>is actually based off of Diskeeper

The KB article is slightly misleading; the defragger in XP was a virtual rewrite of the defragger included with W2K (which was indeed a stripped-down version of Diskeeper)

 

[linney]

I reckon the built in Defragger is as good as any out there, as long as it used regularly, say twice a week, which will cut the time of defragging down to a few minutes rather than a few hours if used less often.

I suggest that regular defragging might prolong the life of a hard drive too if it cuts down on "head" movement.

Maybe I'm lucky but in practicing my suggestion on several machines going way back, I am yet to suffer from a faulty drive requiring a replacement.

Need Defragmenter advice
thread779-1490013

 

[cdogg]

linney, that's a good point about cutting down on head movement, which I can agree with. However, there's more to consider. I guess I should put an asterisk on my last post. Solid state drives and newer spindle drives with NCQ (Native Command Queuing) add quite a bit of resistance already to wear and tear as well as any performance loss. Also the more disk space you have in use on the drive, the harder it's going to have to work during a defrag. So clearly in some situations, it may actually have a negative impact to defrag too often.

 

[strongm]

>Solid state drives

Do not defrag these. There's no point.

 

[flyboytim]

I use the free Puran Defrag with it's decent speed and neat functions, but is not much to look at - of the Chromium school of lacklustre interfaces.

http://www.fxxxingcomputers.co.uk

 

[xwb]

Solid state drives get fragmented same as any other drives: you just don't see the difference as they are quite fast.

 

[cdogg]

strongm is right though. You don't want to defrag a solid state drive. According the following link from Intel, there is no performance benefit:

http://www.intel.com/support/ssdc/hpssd/sb/CS-029623.htm#5

Also, they have a limited number of writes to each block of flash memory. SSD's with MLC (Multi-Level Cell) flash memory are usually limited somewhere between 1,000 and 10,000 writes, whereas SLC (Single-Level Cell) has a much higher resistance at 100,000 or more. In fact, Windows 7 disables disk defragmenter's automated tasks by default for these reasons.

Carl

"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test
a man's character, give him power." - Abraham Lincoln
[tab][navy]For this site's posting policies, click [/navy]here.

 

[strongm]

>Solid state drives get fragmented same as any other drives

The only reason that HD fragementation is an issue is because of the serial, physical nature of the disk access. SSDs do not suffer from this, so no matter how fragmented there is no performance impact.

In addition, the cells have a limited number of writes, so defragging can actually have an detrimental affect.