Defrag programs

[Chriz]

I am considering buying a full fledged hard drive defragmenter program, but there are a few out there. The two I am considering are Diskkeeper and Perfect Disk. Anyone know which one is better?

 

[dphantom]

I can't tell you which is better, those types of questions are usually dependent on the features you need to use to accomplish some type of work.

I have used Diskeeper for years and have not found anything it cannot do well.

 

[Schadenfroh]

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=33&threadid=1755546&enterthread=y

 

[Nothinman]

Most of them have trials for you to play with, but IMO defragmenting is largely worthless.

 

[Captante]

Perfect Disk v8 is about the best stand-alone defragmenter available ... Diskeeper is also decent & I believe the XP built-in defragmenter is a stripped dpwn version of it.

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
Most of them have trials for you to play with, but IMO defragmenting is largely worthless.

My image files have gotten so scattered at this point, that having a defragger lump them together by directory would work wonders. I'm just to lazy to look into degfraggers.

Beign a software geek, this could be an interesting thing to look into. I could code a defragger with some research. And I could make it awesome.

Hrmmm ... a possible busienss venture?

 

[Nothinman]

My image files have gotten so scattered at this point, that having a defragger lump them together by directory would work wonders. I'm just to lazy to look into degfraggers.

What kind of images and wonders?

 

[jadinolf]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
Most of them have trials for you to play with, but IMO defragmenting is largely worthless.

That's interesting.

 

[Rottie]

I am using Diskeeper Pro 10 but it is not so fast...it takes a lot of time to defrag if you have large files to move around but other than that it is a good program though.

 

[jadinolf]

Originally posted by: Rottie
I am using Diskeeper Pro 10 but it is not so fast...it takes a lot of time to defrag if you have large files to move around but other than that it is a good program though.

2007 Pro Premier seems very fast but it's a hundred bucks. I think you could upgrade for sixty.

 

[WildHorse]

After experimenting with several brands, I've been most impressed with Golden Bow Systems'
Vopt XP

The only thing is, it's expensive at forty bucks a pop.

 

[jadinolf]

Originally posted by: scott
After experimenting with several brands, I've been most impressed with Golden Bow Systems'
Vopt XP

The only thing is, it's expensive.

It's not that bad.

 

[flexy]

DK10 Pro, with i-faast...HANDS down better than perfectdisk. Believe me, i have my reasons. I was a PD supporter too for many years.

I could list points now why DK10 is better....starts with filemonitoring and layout of files depending on how frequent they're used.

http://www.diskeeperblog.com/archives/2006/09/inside_ifaast.html#more

UNLIKE what PD says that DK uses "last time accessed" (or "modified", whatever)....in fact DK uses "last accessed" only for the first ever run of ifaast...but then continues to monitor usage and lays them out depending on "most used".

So..either one lies..either PD stating lies about how DK's iffast works..or DK just plain lies about DK's features, which i dont think


Besides DK does something very great, it does NOT consolidate ALL free space "at the end" of the HD liek PD does.

Figure a HD like mine which is 90% full - the last 10% (the free space) would be 50% slower in raw MB/s...you canmeasure that with tools like HDtach etc....EVERY HD starts out fast 'at the beginning" and usuallty the rates drop 50% or so at the end of the HD.

DK actually always creates free room in the first THIRD of the HD.....so basically even if you use your HD for years, over the years the performance of newly created files and write-accesses is GOOD.

NOT with PD.....it holds ANY free space at the end....and when your HD gets full in time every WRITE access and newly created file is SLOWER because it happens at the slow end of the HD ! It literally degrades your performance !

Want more reasons why DK is better ???


btw i just see there is a new DK out

(and NO, i am not a scientologist but DK *is* the better defragger

 

[episodic]

Vopt XP FTW

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

Just read this over.

Are there any free defraggers out there?

 

[daveybrat]

I use Auslogics, it's a freeware defrag utiltiy. Works well and quickly.

Auslogics 1.0.3 Majorgeeks.com

:thumbsup:

 

[nordloewelabs]

Originally posted by: daveybrat
I use Auslogics, it's a freeware defrag utiltiy. Works well and quickly.
Auslogics 1.0.3 Majorgeeks.com

according to their site, the prog uses the Windows API to perform the defragmentation. several programs do the same, which is ok. the prob is that, by using the API, they are basically inheriting the same features and capabilities of Windows' own Defragmenter....

regarding the claim that defragmenting is pointless, i disagree. it's useful if you are constantly creating and erasing files on your drive. and it is *especially* useful if you've never run the defragmenter before.

but of course, do not expect a performance boost of 50%.... if a PC becomes slower, it's time to a fresh install.... and if that doesnt address the issue, it's time for more RAM.

 

[pkme2]

I use Windows Defrag and it works for me. I run it once a week in the background.

 

[DarkTXKnight]

Do a Google for powerdefragmenter GUI. It is the gui interface for contig, which is available from sysinternals for free. It's fast, free and you can still use your machine We use it here on all of our images and virtual machines with noticeable results.

 

[FreedomGUNDAM]

I used PerfectDisk and Diskeeper on different machines. I personally like PerfectDisk a little better

 

[Nothinman]

according to their site, the prog uses the Windows API to perform the defragmentation. several programs do the same, which is ok. the prob is that, by using the API, they are basically inheriting the same features and capabilities of Windows' own Defragmenter....

I wouldn't trust any program that doesn't use the Windows API for defragmenting files, moving files around behind the OSes back isn't smart at all.

regarding the claim that defragmenting is pointless, i disagree. it's useful if you are constantly creating and erasing files on your drive. and it is *especially* useful if you've never run the defragmenter before.

But can you provide benchmark numbers that prove this or are you just talking about how it feels to you?

 

[Gooberlx2]

dirms (for inital defrag) + buzzsaw (for on-the-fly defrag)...freeware. I can't remember the last time my HDDs were fragmented.

 

[nordloewelabs]

But can you provide benchmark numbers that prove this or are you just talking about how it feels to you?

it's how it feels to me. it's also based on knowledge of what the fragmanetation process is. it's pretty obvious that forcing the HD to seek several pieces of data in order to load it to RAM, puts an extra burden on the disk.

do you know of any figures that could prove the pointlessness or usefulness of the procedure?

 

[Nothinman]

it's how it feels to me. it's also based on knowledge of what the fragmanetation process is. it's pretty obvious that forcing the HD to seek several pieces of data in order to load it to RAM, puts an extra burden on the disk.

Everyone knows what defragmentation does, but do you know how demand paging works? Files aren't loaded in large sequential blocks (except for odd things like A/V editing) so having them laid out sequentially buys you virtually nothing. For example, when you run a binary just enough of it is loaded into memory to start it up and find it's dependencies (plus maybe some readahead, I think Windows does up to 64K readahead) then as needed Windows jumps around the disk loading blocks from the binary's dependencies and their dependencies in order to actually run the binary. Same thing with just about any file reads, just enough data is read from disk to satisfy what's necessary so the whole file is never paged in all at once. So no matter what you do the hard disk will be seeking around like mad anyway.

 

[EricMartello]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

it's how it feels to me. it's also based on knowledge of what the fragmanetation process is. it's pretty obvious that forcing the HD to seek several pieces of data in order to load it to RAM, puts an extra burden on the disk.

Everyone knows what defragmentation does, but do you know how demand paging works? Files aren't loaded in large sequential blocks (except for odd things like A/V editing) so having them laid out sequentially buys you virtually nothing. For example, when you run a binary just enough of it is loaded into memory to start it up and find it's dependencies (plus maybe some readahead, I think Windows does up to 64K readahead) then as needed Windows jumps around the disk loading blocks from the binary's dependencies and their dependencies in order to actually run the binary. Same thing with just about any file reads, just enough data is read from disk to satisfy what's necessary so the whole file is never paged in all at once. So no matter what you do the hard disk will be seeking around like mad anyway.

Windows might not load the whole of a file or program, but what it does load is done so sequentially. Having the files stored contiguously on the drive will still make the system more responsive when the file is needed, thus reducing the amount of seeks needed overall.

The thing about defrag shortening an HD's life is at best a myth. If your drive fails while defragging, chances are high that it would have failed anyway sooner or later...it is not specifically the fault of defragging, nor did regular defragging shorten the drive's life.