hmm it would appear Windows 7 Defragger's analysis is not accurate?

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mrk

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I've always been under the thought train that Windows 7 (and Vista) had very capable defraggers but recently been toying around with Defraggler64 and found that Windows has been reporting OS drive fragmentation wrong and in the latest instance today it was out by 10% in its fragmentation estimation:

defraggers.jpg


Anyone else finding this?

I've used O&O/PerfectDisk and Diskeeper before too as I like to trial them out when a new version comes out, they all feel a bit too heavy under the package, too much built in stuff for a simple defragger - all I want to to is defrag and defrag well.

In that respect MyDefrag x64 did that well but I found it took too long for a defrag while getting the same post defrag results as Defraggler.
 
I wouldn't have thought so considering defraggler shows me the exact files that are fragmented and where as well as their sizes :p
 
I don't think the built in Windows de-fragmentation tool counts the page file as fragmented, which could explain the difference. I guess you have 8GB of RAM? Which would mean you have 8GB page file, which is most of what Defraggler is reporting as fragmented.

Maybe :)
 
I have 8GB RAM but a 4GB pagefile and the fragmented files were actually game files (Bad Company 2) as well as other files regularly changed over the OS since my last defrag (a week ago).

The pagefile remained quite defragmented though and exactly where it has been all along as the OS rarely pages large amounts of user data to pagefile due to my 8GB of RAM.
 
Windows doesn't defragment and probably even report on fragmented files over 64MB in size, this is probably why there is a difference in the reports.

Taken from here

When I dual-boot into Windows XP, the defrag results are different from Windows Vista. Why?
The fact that you can see different levels of fragmentation from Windows XP and Windows Vista is not necessarily unexpected. The reason is that Windows XP and Windows Vista use slightly different algorithms for determining which files are fragmented and which files can benefit from fragmentation. On Windows XP, any file that is split into more than one extents is reported as fragmented and the Disk Defragmenter will try to move it. On Windows Vista, we want to take advantage of the fact that the biggest performance gain from defragmentation is when you combine files in "big enough" extents. "Big enough" here is 64 MB, which happens to be about the extent size for which the disk-seek latency starts to become negligible compared to the latency associated with sequentially reading the extent. This means that the performance benefit of coalescing two extents larger than 64 MB is minimal while the I/O load and free space requirements are significant. The different levels of fragmentation that you see for the same volume from Windows XP and Windows Vista are a result of this different treatment of large extents.
Click to expand...
 
That's Windows Vista though? Although similar I'm not sure if it applies to Windows 7. Could it be because you have turned the defrag off on Windows 7? Are the results after you have clicked on Analyze disk?


M.
 
Yes, otherwise it would be pointless posting the comparison analysis screenshots :p

Try it, get a fragmented drive, analyse in Windows then install Defraggler (or MyDefrag) and analyse again and notice the difference.
 
I don't understand how you have any fragmentation at all.

My (work) system hasn't been re-installed since windows 7 hit RTM, and it has 0% fragmentation (as seen by both windows defrag and defraggler) on a 500GB disk that is 69% used.

Windows 7 seems to do a dapper job of keeping file fragmentation at bay.
 
0% fragmentation according to what app? Maybe your work machine only gets used for...well you know, work which by the sounds of it isn't that taxing on the hdd anyway.

Workstations at my workplace are used heavily with large databases and daily back and forth of data and are regularly fragmented by up to 10-15% depending on the week.

My home PC is fragmented by up to 15% weekly because it gets used daily and for multiple things from file transfer between disks to photoshop to video encoding and gaming so how you have an issue understanding how a drive can get fragmented I don't understand.

If a Windows system running a hdd gets used regularly then it will get fragmented and % depends on how heavily it is used.
 
m4cc45 said:
That's Windows Vista though? Although similar I'm not sure if it applies to Windows 7. Could it be because you have turned the defrag off on Windows 7? Are the results after you have clicked on Analyze disk?


M.
Click to expand...

Why would they change the algorithm for Windows 7? Despite all the changes 7 is still based a lot on Vista. And the theory makes sense.

Why go to the effort of joining up chunks if there is no benefit? It would appear defraggler counts all files as fragmented, not just those under 64mb - hence the difference in fragmentation levels reported.

The real question is not what the two programs report, but what difference does it actually make on performance? I am willing to bet almost exactly none.

All the Windows 7 machines I am responsible for have never been reformatted and all use the scheduled Windows defrag. All of the machines are just as snappy as the day I first turned them on.
 
Khaaan! said:
0% fragmentation according to what app? Maybe your work machine only gets used for...well you know, work which by the sounds of it isn't that taxing on the hdd anyway.

Workstations at my workplace are used heavily with large databases and daily back and forth of data and are regularly fragmented by up to 10-15% depending on the week.

My home PC is fragmented by up to 15% weekly because it gets used daily and for multiple things from file transfer between disks to photoshop to video encoding and gaming so how you have an issue understanding how a drive can get fragmented I don't understand.

If a Windows system running a hdd gets used regularly then it will get fragmented and % depends on how heavily it is used.
Click to expand...

As I put, defraggler and windows both report 0%. My machine gets heavily used, its not just a spreadsheet/word processing station. Further to the multitude of VMs I have running, Visual Studio 2010, and various other management suites and tools, I also have Steam with a lot of my games installed, which gets used daily (lunch break).

So, no. Windows 7 is doing a damn fine job of keeping itself clean, but them I generally don't install garbage (and will be removing defraggler now I have proven a point).
 
Well does the Win7 defragger have a schedule set on your work machine?

FWIW my machine doesn't have any such stuff deemed "garbage" installed...

You've not proven a point either though surely :/ You've just proven that your workstation doesn't get fragmented without confirming if Win7 defragger is set on a schedule like it is usually.

If not then fair enough but I can confirm my machine is well maintained (probably too well maintained tbh) but that still doesn't stop disk fragmentation based on my usage.
 
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Khaaan! Your screenshot reports in defraggler that you have 650 files that are fragmented into 2800 parts. How can 650 files possibly be 11% of your drive?
Is it 11% volume? Massive files?

It can't possibly be 11% of the actual files, would suggest you had only 6000 files on the drive which would be unreal for a windows installation.

The variation may simply be in how they judge what is fragmented, one going with % meaning size, and the other going % meaning actual number of files?
 
They were fairly large files, my Android SDK data is stored in the /user directory and with a number of Android VM images I used in the SDK emulator so they were a few GB alone.

If I do an analysis now I get:

defrag1.JPG


If I now run a defrag using Windows 7 Defragger then Defraggler reports:
defrag3.JPG


So the Windows 7 Defragger does work just its analysis reporting sometimes maybe iffy I guess.
 
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well
i can't say that the defragger is not working properly unless i face it myself
however i too am facing some problems
like the battery status shows charging when on battery and on battery whhen its charging
and thats really frustrating me !!!
 
Khaaan! said:
So the Windows 7 Defragger does work just its analysis reporting sometimes maybe iffy I guess.
Click to expand...

It's not really iffy, it just doesn't consider files over 64MB fragmented, I just ran the Windows 7 Defragger and Windows stated it was 0% defragmented, I then ran Defraggler and it stated 13% fragmentation, but looking at the file list the only files fragmented are my WoW MPQ files which are all huge files over 64MB in size.
 
hmm do WoW Blizzard people provide a defrag program for their DB files in the same way the LOTRo people do?
Once run it will defrag the Db files internally, which is very effective for actual real-life speeding up of a system.
 
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