22 replies to this topic

[rpgsearcherz]

Hey all, I'm wondering if anyone can give insight as to what the most efficient defragmenter is. Here's the issue...


Diskeeper - seems to slow down boot time, and over time slows down the PC as a whole it seems.

PerfectDisk - for some reason refuses to defrag my system files, even after choosing to let it reboot to do it...

I just want what is the most efficient - even if it takes longer to do its work.

Also, free or paid isn't really an issue here.

So anyone here who has used multiple(or at least 2) defragmenters(excluding the Windows XP/Vista built in one) that can give insight as to what they liked and disliked about each one?

I'm thinking with more "reviews" I can possibly come up with a decent conclusion.


More or less what I'm looking for are the following :

1)What programs you use(d)

2)What you liked/disliked about each

3)Which one you would vote as the top



Don't vote on one that you haven't used, please.

I'm hoping that this thread can help others make their own decisions as well. We'll see how it goes!

[Saint_Michael]

I would go with defraggler, besides being free it is a thoroughly defragging software and so the bigger the hard drive and the more files that need to get defrag the longer it will take. Either way it should be all that you need in order to clean up your computer.

[rpgsearcherz]

Oddly enough, out of all the reviews/sites I've read, nothing even mentioned that "defraggler." Is that an actual program?lol

And do you happen to have experience with others as well? Everyone can say that theirs is great, if they've only used one. I'm more or less looking for actual comparisons to help narrow it down. For example, I see it going like this(this is theoretical):

Person 1 : Diskeeper is better than O&O
Person 2 : PerfectDisk is better than O&O
Person 3 : Diskeeper is better than Perfectdisk

So I would rank them Diskeeper > Perfectdisk > O&O

I know it's not a "solid" judgement, but at the same time it's much better than just taking the sites that market them and using that as trustable advice,

[Saint_Michael]

first here is the website http://www.defraggler.com/ and second, compared to the windows defrag program this one has more options. Such as defragging single folders, and being a able to defrag a file of all things and on top of that it gives you more information such as how many files need to be defrag, how much space it is taking up and stuff like that. I didn't say it was great just a lot better then the windows version in terms of what information it gives you when defragging a hard drive.

[onscreen]

True, Defraggler is highly recommended as it have more options on how you want to do your defragment, less resource consumed during the defragging and best of all, it have a tiny footprint that hardly used up your precious space

[rpgsearcherz]

So we have two for Defraggler now. Anyone who has used Defraggler and another?(Excluding Windows built-in)

Also, can Defraggler do the MFT and all of the system files(Called "offline defragmenting" I think)?

[Quatrux]

On Windows I usually used the default one given by Windows to defragment my partitions, but on Windows Vista the defragmenting tool really sucks, I don't know if it's possible, but for a simple user it doesn't give any options at all, just does something, so I downloaded Defraggler and installed it, seems quite nice, will use it and hope it really is much better!

[rpgsearcherz]

I am using PerfectDisk right now, but...It just really doesn't seem to be that good overall. It's very fast - doing 170 GB's in about an hour, but at the same time it just doesn't seem to really be speeding up the PC.

I'm used to XP as well, so does Vista possibly have better file management, in terms of placement?

It seems like the most logical reason as to why XP is boosted by so much, yet Vista isn't.

[Saint_Michael]

Well in order to see any improvement by defragging your system is that you would have to let your computer sit for a few months to a year without defragging it and then watch it slow down and take up hard drive space. However, once you use it expect some improvement in speed and see some hard drive space get freed up, but if your defragging once day or once a week, you won't see any improvement.

[rpgsearcherz]

That's a good point, but what I usually do is install Windows(fresh) and keep up with the speed of opening stuff, and then I do the installation of OpenOffice, whatever games I play, Nero, and other programs, and then re-do it again.

Maybe one day we won't even need to defrag again since the systems will automatically place files in the best spots, .

[myriad]

My vote for Diskeeper. I use the 08 version on Vista and havent had any problems with it. I like the way it defrags without leaving any files and that the automatic mode works very well. I've heard the 09 version is a step ahead being able to defrag in very severe fragmentation and under low free space as well. 

[rpgsearcherz]

With Diskeeper, it seems to slow down over time though. At least with the boot-up of the PC. Have you experienced that yet?

Maybe it's just me, .

[Ousk]

I use o&o currently because diskeeper can't install on my computer, but i loved, when it worked, the diskeeper defragment method, the fast one. But now i think I'll try this defragger everyone talks about, because I'm fed up with o&o.

[rpgsearcherz]

It's kind of funny how many free programs are much better than their paid counter-parts...

For example, I find the best antivirus to be AVG, yet it was 100% free at one point.

Here you guys are voting for the free Defraggler, yet there are many other expensive ones.

Just kind of funny how "You get what you paid for" doesn't seem to exist anymore.

[rayzoredge]

Obviously, I'm going to say that the defragmenter that comes with Windows XP sucks.

I've been using Diskeeper for at least half a year now, and can vouch for how much better it is over Windows XP's solution.

- It can continuously manually and automatically defragment your hard drives WHILE you multitask, whereas M$'s crap has to restart itself if you make any changes to your hard drive, no matter how miniscule.
- It has a frag shield to prevent much if any further fragmentation to your hard drive, but only if you have Diskeeper running.
- It seems to do a decent job, performance-wise.
- It's rather informative in what it's doing... it will let you know when it's automatically defragmenting, what it's moving, what the clusters are, etc.
- There are many settings you can set.
- You can defragment your boot table (although this requires a restart, in which you can't do anything until it's done).

The only gripe that I have about it so far is that it is a service that continually runs in the background, but as far as it being a memory or CPU hog, I don't really know.

I would make the plunge into trying out Defraggler and other solutions, but I'm not the kind of person that will install different things just to check them out... unless I'm on the way to re-wiping and re-installing. (I have a set way that I like my PCs, and I hate crappy uninstallations that leave registry keys, DLLs, and other files.)

[rpgsearcherz]

If you don't like Diskeeper running in the background, you can turn it off. I'm not thinking it makes too much of a difference anyways, as it is more of an idle process than anything. Unless you're just kind of sitting there or surfing the internet(forums?) it won't do any defragging(unless you ask it to of course).

As for the boot up defragging of the boot table and MFT, I've been having issues getting it to work since I last reformatted...For some reason when I use the start-up defragmenters(It seems to be any of them, not just Diskeeper) it will give me a black screen when I boot and force me to restart again, thereby not doing anything at all...

[rayzoredge]

I've had the restart problem before where it would fail at the initial checks or something (I can't remember), and then it ends up not doing anything at all.

Then again, I'm not too worried about shaving a few seconds off of boot-time... unless it does make that much of a difference.

I know I can shut the service off very easily, but isn't the program dependent on the service itself? Like I said, I can't remember if it's a resource hog or not... but personally, it doesn't bother me much. (Hence, the very minor gripe.)

http://reviews.cnet.com/disk-management-an...7-30536091.html
http://lifehacker.com/software/featured-wi...gler-306393.php

Both programs get kudos from two sources that I personally trust. Looks like Defraggler is a dumbed-down, simpler defragmentation program... which actually is a good thing for some people. (No schedules, no background scans... it only runs when you run it.) It might be dependent on what kind of usage you want to get out of the program... and of course, whether you want to fork over the money for Diskeeper's additional features (which can possibly be overrated).

[triplebtalk]

I use AusLogics Boost Speed, it is great and the basic version is free. Of course it has some small downfalls such as you cannot defrag to often in trial. But I still find it amazing and very useful.

[rpgsearcherz]

@triple

Never heard of that one...I'll check that out as well.


@rayzor

You don't need to disable the service. In the program itself just disable automatic defragmentation,

[sunracer]

Another vote for Diskeeper. Use 2009 Pro on two XP Pro SP3 systems. Great utility- does the job without any fuss and has a small resource utilization footprint even on the auto defrag mode.

I even managed to defrag a 250GB drive that had way less than 10% free space with Diskeeper

[Mordent]

As a quick aside: for those of you using Linux, you're in luck! Unlike your Windows-bound associates, you get the joy of having a filesystem that doesn't need defragmenting. Lucky you, eh? I had pondered this quite a bit when I first took up the Linux mantle, as being a stickler for tidiness I'd kept my XP hard disk well defragmented. Still, if you're still not convinced, I'd suggest Googling for linux defragmenters, not to mention this handy link, which explains it pretty well.

Naturally you'll have fun should you want to start resizing partitions, but Windows users get that anyway.

[iGuest]

ResponseBest Hdd Defragmenter?

I currently use a Vista, and the defragment program that they give us is probably the worst I've ever seen. I keep pressing defrag, and it just doesn't do ANYTHING for me. So I googled a bit and I found that defraggler was a good program.

The first time I used it, it took me 5 hrs to defrag it. I found this completely normal because I haven't defragged my computer since I bought it (a year and a half ago), so 5 hrs of my time was worth the wait.

The results? I got 60GBs opened up, and when I finished, I noticed that everything was actually a lot faster. Opening folders, pictures, internet things, just everything was faster. I was happy and content with it.

I also heard that everyone should defrag about once every week, so in a week, I tried to defrag again. I hoped that it would take around 20-45 minutes, but instead, after 2 hrs, it still was at 89%. I was pissed and just thought that defraggler was good only if you haven't defragged in a long time.

I then heard about diskeeper, and downloaded the trial version. Right when I ran it, it was FAST, it took me 10 minutes to "defrag" my main memory, but the downside was...I don't think it did a lot. 

Why?

I went back to defraggler (defraggler shows some sort of picture while defragging, while diskeeper doesn't) and it still showed a bunch of fragmented files. I now was even more mad at Diskeeper pro and decided that even if defraggler doesn't take 20-40 minutes like I would've like it to do, I still like it better.

so... +1 vote for Defraggler =]

-reply by Makion

[iGuest]

Definitly not PerfectDisk 10Best Hdd Defragmenter?

Wow, PerfectDisk 10 is terrible. I just let it run a full‘SMARTPlacement’ and it substantially decreased my drive performanceAnd increased my free space fragmentation.

Stats:Vista x648GB DDR2 RamAll nonessential background programs were shut down during this run.

If you need proof, check these links:http://i50.Tinypic.Com/2qbvv9z.JpgAndhttp://i47.Tinypic.Com/2ev6u74.Jpg

This program is ridiculously awful. I had such a horrific experienceWith this program that I’m placing this review on multiple sites.

-reply by Gyrolin