Win2000 Defraggers

[RalfHutter]

What defragger are people using for Win2000? Have you found any performance difference between any of them? I've been using Diskeeper 6.0 but am also considering Raxco's Perfect Disk 2000, O&O Defrag, and Norton Speed Disk. Does anyone have any experience with these (good or bad)? I'm not really hung up on fast defrag speed, I'm more interested in how well disk access is improved (or not) depending on each defraggers' propriatary method of file placement.

 

[thommy]

I use Diskeeper 6 and it's horrible on FAT32 parititions. It takes an hour just to analyze the partition. I don't find any difference in disk access before/after I defrage, though it might be because of 10ms hd seek time on this cruddy laptop.

 

[jaywallen]

Hi,

For what it's worth, I tried and registered Diskeeper 5.0, upgraded later on to version 6.0. I was interested in seeing if any of the other defraggers might have features I found appealing, so I compared uninstalled Diskeeper and tried Raxco's Perfect Disk and O&O Defrag (the W2K "Pro" version). Perfect Disk and O&O are one-pass defraggers, unlike Diskeeper which likes to be run several times. All of these defraggers have boot-time options for defragging pagefiles, MFT, etc. Raxco claims that they are the only one that defrags ALL meta data. I found that the Raxco product had some malfunctioning menu choices. (They simply didn't execute.) That sort of stuff turns me off big time, so I ditched it and turned my attention to O&O. I like O&O better than Diskeeper for my machine, a notebook computer. I like to run a defragger on this machine in one pass scheduled or manually when I don't need the PC for anything else. On a desktop system with a fast hard drive, I'd probably opt for Diskeeper running in continuous defrag mode in the background.

I didn't try Norton Speed Disk for two reasons. 1) I detest all of the incredibly useless-feature-rich software Norton / Symantec has produced, some of it downright deadly, IMHO. 2) Norton Speed Disk is reputed (not by their competitors but, rather, by independent sources I consider reliable) to use a method of defragging the MFT which is specifically designated as unsuitable by Microsoft. (This could be truth or pure bunkum, but the allegation in combination with my dislike for the company and its practices was enough to keep me from considering it.)

On the other hand I see a great many people here and elsewhere who appear to be quite knowledgeable and experienced who articulate fervent support for Speed Disk. Since I haven't tried it I can't give it a poor rating. It is supposed to incorporate some features (like choice of file placement order on the hard drive) that should, theoretically, enable it to optimize your hard drive's read / write times.

That's my $.02. Good luck in your search for the better defragger!

Regards,
Jim

 

[cirrus1]

I use the Speeddisk that comes with NU 2001. It works great for me. Much better than the defragger that comes with W2K

 

[jaywallen]

Yup, I think we can all agree that the defragger that comes with W2K is a little lame, though perhpas sufficient for the needs of many people.

May I ask how "aggressively" you use Speed Disk? I have a feeling that the problems most reported with Speed Disk, and one or two other Norton apps, may have to do with the settings people use with them.

Of course, it will never matter how well a piece of software is written. There will always be those who can make it fail.

Regards,
Jim

 

[TatSteeL]

I have read an article some where but couldn't remember, anyway it saids that you don't need to run any of those performance utilities. I've been using the win2k defrag and it works great for me, it might be a little slow then those utilities otherwise its good.

 

[Davegod75]

i use the w2k one. just run it when you go to bed or when your not gonna use your box for an hour or two. It's not that bad and you all know it. I think some people just like to complain about it.

 

[jaywallen]

TatSteeL and Davegod75,

I'd say the "lite" version of Diskeeper included with W2K is probably sufficient for many, if not most people, but I would add a provision to that statement. A lot of people buy OEM imaged systems the consumer versions of which invariably come formatted FAT32. For instance, Dell doesn't offer to ship Dimensions or Inspirons formatted NTFS, but they do offer NTFS format as an option with Optiplex and some Latitude models. Also, a user who installs her/his own system may try FAT32 before deciding to move on to NTFS. If a user winds up using the CONVERT utility, s/he winds up with 512 byte clusters. If the partition is large, the overhead for keeing track of 512 byte clusters is humongous, and the fragmentation forced on the MFT by this small cluster size will eventually cause W2K to run VERY slowly.

The point I'm getting at is that the included defragger won't defrag the MFT. Some of the third party defraggers, including the "heavy" version of Diskeeper from Executive software, can be set to defrag the MFT at boot time. Some even have settable automatic thresholds that cause this boot time defragmentation to occur when the MFT has reached the specified level of fragmentation.

I'd also point out that there are small, but significant to some, gains to be had by placing the MFT, pagefile, and directory entries at the front of a partition. Some of the defraggers allow a certain degree of control over file placement, and that can be useful on heavily stressed systems.

But I agree that, for those who use FAT or FAT32, and perhaps for many who use NTFS, the in-built defragger works well enough. On the other hand, I see people adding all sorts of crappy, invasive, OS-farkling utilities to their systems. Defraggers are at least less likely to affect a user adversely than a third party registry cleaner, uninstaller, or a crash "guard" -- particularly when most such utilities allow an inexperienced user enough latitude to cause serious harm to the OS and installed software configurations.

Regards,
Jim