Best defragger

chuck990

chuck990

chuck990

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hey vista's defrag programme is absoloute tripe and i was looking for suggestions for free, safe, efficient software that will do the job instead (if there is such a thing as safe and free software :p )
 
oh and to fire wizard:
i left it running for 36 hours and as there is no progress bar or any indication of how much its done i gave up, this was just after i installed vista for the first time on a new build, before all drivers etc.
 
JkDefrag GUI, best defragger you can get and best of all it's free and works on XP, Vista and Windows 7 x86 & X64.
 
chuck990 said:
oh and to fire wizard:
i left it running for 36 hours and as there is no progress bar or any indication of how much its done i gave up, this was just after i installed vista for the first time on a new build, before all drivers etc.
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I can't really see a reason to even worry about defragging your hard drives anymore. In Windows Vista and Windows 7 it's all automated. It's set to automatically defragment your hard drive every week. It runs as a low priority process so it doesn't interfere with your work so you don't actually have to wait till the process is complete so you can use your system again.

I have seen no evidence that any of these third party programs do a significantly better job than the inbuilt one in Windows Vista / Windows 7. If anyone has any articles on this though, please feel free to share.
 
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Fire Wizard said:
I can't really see a reason to even worry about defragging your hard drives anymore. In Windows Vista and Windows 7 it's all automated. It's set to automatically defragment your hard drive every week. It runs as a low priority process so it doesn't interfere with your work so you don't actually have to wait till the process is complete so you can use your system again.
Click to expand...

I don't want it to be automated, it's supposed to not interfere but it definitely does, it slows down the pc by a lot. I'm not talking about cpu cycles here but hdd speed, doing stuff like moving around big files, installing games, extracting big rars, loading times, etc is all slower during a windows defrag. Not to mention the crunching noise it makes.

Defraggler also has 2 options, low priority and normal, but I see no difference between the two except that on normal priority it sucks up a lot more cpu power, that aside it slows down the pc a lot, sure you can still do anything, it's all just a bit slower, it loads slower, it extracts stuff slower, it's just very annoying and I definitely don't have the patience for it. I just want to set it to defrag before going to bed or out and it to be done once I'm at my pc again, windows defrag is way too slow for this, a full defrag takes over 10 hours... Or I simply install a new game, notice it's fragmented by analyzing it with defraggler, and simply JUST defrag that single folder quickly so the thing I want is fast, this means the defrag is usually done within 5 minutes.

The main problem is windows wants a full defrag of the whole pc, doesn't want to leave my lost cause FAT32 drive alone, and doesn't allow for a quick defrag of one specific folder. And it's just so annoying that it doesn't tell how long it's going to take and where it's @ and how bad the state of 1 perticular hdd is.
I have seen no evidence that any of these third party programs do a significantly better job than the inbuilt one in Windows Vista / Windows 7. If anyone has any articles on this though, please feel free to share.
Click to expand...
They have a decent UI though, showing progress, allowing you to defrag only specific folders if you need it done quickly for 1 particular game or so. A full defrag is never an option for me as one of my 6 hdd's still has fat32 partitions and a full defrag would take over a week... I only want my 5 ntfs drives defragged... And I do want a progress bar and a detailed graph. Something 'that just says it's defragging is useless. It's like a a car dash in your car, that only shows that your engine is running or not, forgetting to tell you how much fuel is left ( ETA time and an overview of your hdd showing fragmented bits in red), a speedo ( how quickly the status moves from one file/folder to another), and a rev counter ( status bar, what file/folder it is busy with atm) .
 
well if it's supposed to do it automaticly then its failing........ the defragger i downloaded earlier says the drive is over 35% fragmented
 
chuck990 said:
vista's defrag programme is absoloute tripe
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I have to agree with that.

Left mine running for over 15 hours, with no progress indication whatsoever. Had to cancel it in the end.

Sure, it's enough for the average family pc. But for enthusiasts and overclockers it's far too basic.
 
Best freeware JKDefrag, l've been using Perfeckdisk 10 for about 7 months now just set it to SMARTPLACEment and u just for get about it cracking bit of software.
 
snowdog said:
I don't want it to be automated, it's supposed to not interfere but it definitely does, it slows down the pc by a lot. I'm not talking about cpu cycles here but hdd speed, doing stuff like moving around big files, installing games, extracting big rars, loading times, etc is all slower during a windows defrag. Not to mention the crunching noise it makes.

Defraggler also has 2 options, low priority and normal, but I see no difference between the two except that on normal priority it sucks up a lot more cpu power, that aside it slows down the pc a lot, sure you can still do anything, it's all just a bit slower, it loads slower, it extracts stuff slower, it's just very annoying and I definitely don't have the patience for it. I just want to set it to defrag before going to bed or out and it to be done once I'm at my pc again, windows defrag is way too slow for this, a full defrag takes over 10 hours... Or I simply install a new game, notice it's fragmented by analyzing it with defraggler, and simply JUST defrag that single folder quickly so the thing I want is fast, this means the defrag is usually done within 5 minutes.

The main problem is windows wants a full defrag of the whole pc, doesn't want to leave my lost cause FAT32 drive alone, and doesn't allow for a quick defrag of one specific folder. And it's just so annoying that it doesn't tell how long it's going to take and where it's @ and how bad the state of 1 perticular hdd is.

They have a decent UI though, showing progress, allowing you to defrag only specific folders if you need it done quickly for 1 particular game or so. A full defrag is never an option for me as one of my 6 hdd's still has fat32 partitions and a full defrag would take over a week... I only want my 5 ntfs drives defragged... And I do want a progress bar and a detailed graph. Something 'that just says it's defragging is useless. It's like a a car dash in your car, that only shows that your engine is running or not, forgetting to tell you how much fuel is left ( ETA time and an overview of your hdd showing fragmented bits in red), a speedo ( how quickly the status moves from one file/folder to another), and a rev counter ( status bar, what file/folder it is busy with atm) .
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thanks for this. good post
 
Fire Wizard, I fear your head is slightly in the sand here mate

give o&o defrag a whirl, they have a 30 day trial
 
snowdog said:
I don't want it to be automated, it's supposed to not interfere but it definitely does, it slows down the pc by a lot. I'm not talking about cpu cycles here but hdd speed, doing stuff like moving around big files, installing games, extracting big rars, loading times, etc is all slower during a windows defrag. Not to mention the crunching noise it makes.
Click to expand...

My experience is the complete opposite. I haven't once noticed the inbuilt defagger to interfere with anything that I'm doing. Though, this may be because I'm not doing any of those kind of tasks that you have just highlighted during the automated scan. So, I manually ran the inbuilt defragger at the same time I was installing a game and I couldn't say I noticed a difference in the amount of times it takes to install the game weather the defragment program was running or not. I also couldn't notice a difference in game loading times at all.

Or I simply install a new game, notice it's fragmented by analyzing it with defraggler, and simply JUST defrag that single folder quickly so the thing I want is fast, this means the defrag is usually done within 5 minutes.
Click to expand...

Surly the whole point of defragging your hard drives is to improve system performance? Until the performance of your system starts to suffer and is noticeable to you, why do you need to worry about defragging at all especially individual folders?

The main problem is windows wants a full defrag of the whole pc, doesn't want to leave my lost cause FAT32 drive alone, and doesn't allow for a quick defrag of one specific folder. And it's just so annoying that it doesn't tell how long it's going to take and where it's @ and how bad the state of 1 perticular hdd is.
Click to expand...

They have a decent UI though, showing progress, allowing you to defrag only specific folders if you need it done quickly for 1 particular game or so. A full defrag is never an option for me as one of my 6 hdd's still has fat32 partitions and a full defrag would take over a week... I only want my 5 ntfs drives defragged... And I do want a progress bar and a detailed graph. Something 'that just says it's defragging is useless. It's like a a car dash in your car, that only shows that your engine is running or not, forgetting to tell you how much fuel is left ( ETA time and an overview of your hdd showing fragmented bits in red), a speedo ( how quickly the status moves from one file/folder to another), and a rev counter ( status bar, what file/folder it is busy with atm) .
Click to expand...

Can't you specify which drives you wish to defrag with the inbuilt defragger? Admittedly, it doesn't show you how long until the defragmentation process is complete which I have never really worried about since it's all automated on my systems. If you wish to see the progress though, then I guess you will need a third-party alternative.

For slightly more control over the inbuilt defragger though, have a look at this page here.

bledd. said:
Fire Wizard, I fear your head is slightly in the sand here mate
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The main point of defragging your hard drive is to improve the speed of your system and the fact that all of my Windows Vista based systems are running just as fast and responsive as when I first installed Windows Vista would suggest that the inbuilt defragger is doing a sufficient job. I can only really go by my own experiences.
 
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