Disk Defragmenter

[DudeMiester]

I know the one windows comes with isn't the best, so what is? I'd like to know the absolute best one, and the best free one.

[superbo3]

i use PerfectDisk 7.0 http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif i learned about it at work all our machines have this http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif the admin does a network defrag from the server or something with it quite handy http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

i like it sorts files after useage so the files that gets written on is together and the ones not used offen is a other place http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

[GodBlitZor]

Yep. Thats a good one, so Ive heard...

[Jeff]

Most good software is usually paid for, but I would recommend Executive Software Diskkeeper (I've got version 7, but there's a version 9 I think now). It's about $60 Canadian or so, but it does a good job at defragging my hard drives.

[Joonas]

DIRMS. Do It Right Microsoft.

[SyntaxN]

Like jeffbthomson said, get diskeeper, I think it´s really worth the money http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif (if you want to pay for it^^)

[Jeff]

I should get version 9 sometime. Or keep my current one. I wonder how much better this one is to the version 7 that I have? Probably just a snazzy interface.

[DudeMiester]

At first glance PerfectDisk looks better then Diskeeper, but this DIRMS/Buzzsaw looks nice however the quality of the website makes me question it. I'd like some more info though on people's experiance with them. Not just did it work, but the level of fragmentation before and after using them, defrag time, and performance differences. Also, I have PageDefrag for my page file, but what about the Master File Table? PerfectDisk says it does that, but does Diskeeper or DIRMS? And does DisKeeper or DIRMS defrag NTFS metadata like PerfectDisk? Also, do the latest versions of PerfectDisk and Diskeeper resolve the interstice issue that DIRMS addresses? I don't see a date for the last update on the DIRMS page, so I'm not sure.

[Jeff]

Diskkeeper can do boot time defragmentations, which can defrag the paging file as well as the MFT. Been able to do it before, but last time I ran it, it said that it couldn't defrag a contiguous page file, even if it was outside of Windows. Weird. I though the page file was in use only in Windows, not during a boot time defrag (before it boots into Windows).

[DudeMiester]

It isn't in use. Must be a weird programming error. Well if you want to defrag your pagefile, you can get PageDefrag here www.sysinternals.com (http://www.sysinternals.com)

[TerminX]

The absolute best one is O&O Defrag. Don't know about any freebies, though.

[avatar_58]

Is there something wrong with the one that comes with windows? It seems to work ok for me....(the odd time I ever actually use it http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/redface.gif )

[NutWrench]

DudeMiester said:
It isn't in use. Must be a weird programming error. Well if you want to defrag your pagefile, you can get PageDefrag here www.sysinternals.com (http://www.sysinternals.com)



That's a good free one for pagefiles.

[Bludd]

I don't trust MFT defraggers. I've seen them mess up the MFT real bad.

[DudeMiester]

Bludd said:
I don't trust MFT defraggers. I've seen them mess up the MFT real bad.



Good point, I've got important data and don't yet have a DL DVD writer to back it up. Been nagging at the back of my mind for a while now. I'm thinking of getting the latest Plextor model, unless someone thinks there's something better.

[Inanimate Carbon Rod]

The one that comes with System Mechanic is very good.

[NetNessie]

TerminX said:
The absolute best one is O&O Defrag.



Because TerminX has never been wrong before, I decided to test it out and it did an awesome job. My HD was 75% fragmented, took a good 7 hours.

Very nice program, runs very smoothly too. I recommend it now. http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

[Kevin Wolff]

TerminX said:
The absolute best one is O&O Defrag.


Beaten to it. Use it myself on all my Windows boxes. http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

[Jeff]

I had tried using the System Mechanic defragger and it said that there were disk surface errors with my RAID array. So I ran a chkdsk, and the array was clean. Ran the defragger again, same problem. I go and run Diskkeeper, and I was able to defrag it. Usually, if there are file system or surface errors, you can't defrag the drive.

I'll stick with Diskkeeper thanks. http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

[Joonas]

Kevin Wolff said:

TerminX said:
The absolute best one is O&O Defrag.


Beaten to it. Use it myself on all my Windows boxes. http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif



LOVE IT! http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/love.gif

[TerminX]

NetNessie said:
Because TerminX has never been wrong before


Flattering, but untrue. http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif


Very nice program, runs very smoothly too. I recommend it now. http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif


Yeah, it's a real nice defragmentation suite -- my only problem with it is for some reason it won't defragment my C: on my gaming rig properly. I think something is seriously wrong with the filesystem/Windows installation on the drive, though -- it's been salvaged from multiple dying/almost dead hard disks via Ghost and had god knows how many repair installs run on it after such operations, not to mention been resized more than a few times via the ntfsresize utility that comes with Knoppix and using Linux fdisk to delete and recreate the partition.

/me uses fsutil to set the volume's "dirty" bit and hopes a chkdsk on boot will take care of it

Edit: I'd also like to point out to anyone recommending people buy Diskeeper.. you do realize that the defragmentation utility that comes with 2000/XP is Diskeeper, right? Check out of the about dialog -- "Copyright (c) 2001 Microsoft Corp. and Executive Software International, Inc. (http://www.executive.com/coverpage.asp)"

[Another Duke Fan]

TerminX said: I'd also like to point out to anyone recommending people buy Diskeeper.. you do realize that the defragmentation utility that comes with 2000/XP is Diskeeper, right? Check out of the about dialog -- "Copyright (c) 2001 Microsoft Corp. and Executive Software International, Inc. (http://www.executive.com/coverpage.asp)"



The Disk Defragmenter distributed under XP is not the same utility as Diskeeper. Diskeeper is by far intelligent, faster, versatile and runs on the fly. Even that Executive has developed the Disk Defragmenter, as distributed by MS under XP, Diskeeper is a huge leap of improvement over it in terms of performance. I used it for years and know the difference. Here is a link to the comparison: http://www1.execsoft.com/pdf/DK-WINXP-2000_Comparison.pdf

[Bludd]

Yeah and if you've been at a business that use the server enterprise edition of the new diskeeper, you can see it's great ability at defragging very large volumes in a relatively short amount of time. The Terabyte Volume Engine works great as far as I have seen it.

[Kev_Boy]

I've been extremely satisfied with O&O Defrag, it does a thorough job and actually finished before you've died.

I do have a question though, I always go for SPACE defragmentation, is that the best for a desktop computer? I never knew for sure whether it was or not...

[Kevin Wolff]

Myself, I like doing Full/Name. It takes forever but it's the only thing that seems to work on some drives.

[TerminX]

Kevin Wolff said:
Myself, I like doing Full/Name. It takes forever but it's the only thing that seems to work on some drives.


Why? I'm pretty sure that COMPLETE/Access or SPACE are the best for a desktop. Personally, I do COMPLETE/Access on my system drive and the drive I keep my games on, and SPACE on a mass storage drive.

[Jeff]

As being the neutral guy that I am, I can't seem to make up my mind now. I've heard that you can buy O&O Defrag without a credit card, which would be in my best interests. At the same time Diskkeeper does the job, but O&O has some features that Diskkeeper doesn't. It's only $50 or so US, so I don't know what to do.

[Kevin Wolff]

TerminX said:

Kevin Wolff said:
Myself, I like doing Full/Name. It takes forever but it's the only thing that seems to work on some drives.


Why? I'm pretty sure that COMPLETE/Access or SPACE are the best for a desktop. Personally, I do COMPLETE/Access on my system drive and the drive I keep my games on, and SPACE on a mass storage drive.


Well, my brother's system had some really badly fragmented drives (35% or so), and they were almost full on top of that. The other methods never seemed to reduce the percentage much...but COMPLETE/Name did the trick. Probably not the fastest I guess, but it appears to be the most foolproof for getting everything defragmented.

Could just be an abnormality on my side....can't say for sure.

[Another Duke Fan]

Neutral? Not you, but the rest of us, since you are the one that is asking for advice. The decision is all yours. There is plenty of info here already pointing that O&O Defrag and Diskeeper are both excellent choice. Read, compare, try yourself both of them and make up your own mind. Good luck!

[Joonas]

I'm fighting between O&O and PerfectDisk. PD does a marvellous job as a defragmenter and also defrags paging file. (Usually required to do during boot up.) O&O has a better GUI with lots of more features. Cluster info, many different algorithms...

... ARGH! http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/brickwall.gif

[TerminX]

Bump. Discovered a couple of cool command line utils for defragging that actually seem to work on the volume I'm having issues with in O&O, so I figured I'd share them here:

Contig (http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/Contig.html) -- makes files contiguous(defragments them). Can do either all files or specific files on the drive.
Dirms (http://www.dirms.com) -- moves files around on disk and compacts them together so that all the free space is in one spot.

I also discovered this (http://www.holysmoke.org/cos/windows-hack.htm) funny shit -- German versions of Windows have removal instructions for the disk defragmenter as the CEO of Executive Software (who, as noted previously, does Diskeeper and the default defrag util) is one of those nutty scientologists. They were afraid it may have contained a backdoor.

[Temp_user473]

Diskeeper 9>o&o defrag imho


tried both, i wasted a lot of time figuring out which defrag type to use, and once it finished i hardly saw any perfomance increase. But diskkeeper 9 is is really nice program, easy and fast. Makes defrag a fun job. MS defrag is nice and easy too, with one problem: it hardly does anything http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif LOL http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/doh.gif

[TerminX]

Raidomarek said:
i wasted a lot of time figuring out which defrag type to use


Translation: "Having choices confuses me and I have difficulty reading documentation."

They're pretty well described in the docs, which you obviously didn't read.

[Temp_user473]

i did, numerous times http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

but diskeeper did still give better results http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif