UltimateDefrag - is this the best defragger ever?

For those performance freaks take note that there's another defragger that's just entered the fray - UltimateDefrag ... and from what I've seen so far, if I were Raxco, Diskeeper Corp or O&O Software, I'd be very worried at the moment.

This product was apparently only released on 21 October 2006.

I've used Perfectdisk (7 & 8 versions) and Diskeeper (10 & 11 versions) in the past, but this little beauty appears to blow them all out of the water.

And in only few megabyte download! This thing is tiny!

The program display is drop dead gorgeous (okay this is a subjective thing, but admit it, how often have you all wanted the disk fragmentation screen to actually LOOK like a hard drive - ie circular. Well this has it.)

You'll want to run a regular defrag just to watch the colours dancing around the screen!

You can also click on any cluster to see exactly what's in there. AND as the program is defragging, the actual file being worked on that instant is displayed. All in all it's quite mesmerising.

I'm still testing it (it takes a while to understand the effect of the various options, and the option of four defrag methods doesn't help in making things clear) but all signs are outstanding. My laptop appears to be measurably quicker in general operation, more so than with any of the other defrag programs.

This one supposedly moves your main programs (based on various options) to the outside of the disk, which is a quicker to access. I believe this is like the i-FAAST feature of PD. But UltimateDefrag has many more options than PD.

Perhaps I'm just wishing the new program to make things faster than the others, but it certainly feels like it.

I'd be interested in other people's perceptions once they try it.

Oliver

 

sorry, the iFAAST feature is in Diskeeper, not PD. I was too excited when typing the post...
Oliver

 

Tsk, Tsk for not leaving us curious "Performance Freaks" with a link to download it... LOL

Download UltimateDefrag

Thanks for the heads up on this piece of $39.95 Shareware. I'll be certain to give it a try as well. Right now I'm just using Windows Defrag but with a batch file with AutoDefrag.

 

Sorry once again regarding no link.
This is my first post to this forum and I did in fact include a link in my first post, but when it appeared in the forum the link was gone. I don't know what I did wrong.
I'll try again ... here's the homepage: http://www.disktrix.com/ultimatedefrag/ultimatedefrag.htm
Oliver

 

doesn't look that great to me

no

 

UltimateDefrag's method seems great but this statement gives me doubts:

should i use a defragger to reduce further fragmention or to improve performance of existing files?

 

looks like advertising to me...

 

All the eye-candy aside, Ultimate D is not the best defragger ever, in my opinion. (See how good I am at staying On Thread?)

The best defragger (IMO) is free, & it's Power Defragmenter + Contig.

You'll want to run a defrag just to watch the white letters fly by on a tiny black screen.

 

Too late, I have already the best defragger : PerfectDisk and all the other defraggers don't exclude the file C:\$ISR\0\$ISRBIN automatically, including UltimateDefrag.
Besides that, defraggers bungle my freetime and are nothing but a necessary evil to me. I'm waiting for a storage media that doesn't need any defragging.

 

Thanks for sharing the links!!

I've always wanted a defragmenter that needs no installation!

 

Love the lame advertising.

And this is from the homepage:

Sprite?
Nice use of Capital Letters to show that Something is Important.

 

Hello,
What makes a defragger best ever?
On what criteria do you base your claim, Oliver?
Mrk

 

I don't understand this statement.
How can UltimateDefrag give me that experience and same sprite back as when my PC was brand new.
Does that mean my PC is malware-free again after running UltimateDefrag, because my brand new PC was malware-free ?

I didn't feel anything after running UltimateDefrag, not even the sprite.

 

Question is which gives the best performance gain ? in my case reducing future file fragmentation is a BIG priority as I modifiy a lot of files, someone else might have say a games machine where the files are not modified often, therefore existing file performance is more important.

Also, dont forget XP does some prefetch file ordering trickery, which does work, question is, does this program offer any further benifits (which are real world noticable) ?

Im not going to pass judgement on this program as I wont be testing it (as I'm not got the time), but I will say head seek time is usually the peformance limitation, so reducing this by moving out unused files and leaving used ones together makes sense so the heads have to move less, but with things like buffers and caches, how much of a real world performance difference will there be (eg boot time, loading firefox, opening and closing outlook rather than benchmarks)?

 

What happens if one doesn't exclude the hidden FDISR folders? Is it not a good thing that everything gets defragged btw?

 

I don't know what will happen, but it's proven that PerfectDisk exclude this C:\$ISR\0\$ISRBIN automatically and Leapfrog/Raxco don't do this without a good reason.
As far I remember from my readings FDISR might lose its Pre-boot Screen.
If your system partition is in serious trouble and you need the Pre-boot Screen during reboot in order to boot in a rollback snapshot, you might not be able to do this.
My policy is to let each software work in the best circumstances and to stay out of trouble and if I really want trouble, I always have an image ready for a complete restoration.

 

I did try this Ultimatedefragger. I defragged three times with different defrag options. Everytime it did defrag the hidden FDISR folders too. FDISR still work as it should. I can reboot to my other snapshots without any problems.
After that I excluded the FDISR folders from the defrag and defragged again. All works fine.
So to me it seems like it doesnt matter if one excludes the hidden FDISR folders or not.

As for the defragger; It is nice to see what is going on, looks nice. But I cant say I feel any difference in speed with this one compared to Perfectdisk. I have not digged into the inner workings of Ultimatedefragger, maybe it can boost everything when I understand it better.

 

I was of the same opinion about Power Defragmenter & contig. I still have it.

But I'm using AusLogics Disk Defrag. It's FREEWARE as well. I'm impressed. It's very simple though. Here:
http://www.auslogics.com/disk-defrag/index.php

 

Well that doesn't matter to me, I just don't give defraggers any chance to bungle FDISR. So I keep on using PerfectDisk.
My computer doesn't work faster after defragging and I don't feel nano-seconds.

 

Ayup, obviously a shill.

 

The speed that matters is NOT how long it takes to do a defrag, the thing that really matters is how WELL the defrag is done to improve system performance and increase the time between needed defrags.

From what I've seen, Perfect Disk is best as it reduces future defragging by arranging the files by modification date.

 

I'm from DiskTrix - this was not an advertisement and we do not know the individual who started this thread - OliverK - we sure do appreciate his comments however. Glad you like the product so much.

On the matter of PerfectDisk sorting by Modification date, UltimateDefrag can do that too - with a lot more flexibility. But let me assure you that there is so much more to improving performance both in use and defrag times than just doing this.

Nickr pretty much hit the nail on the head about seek times being a limitation on performance - a regular defrag - does nothing to improve seek times - except improving the access times of fragmented files. UltmateDefrag and Diskeeper both do the objectively correct thing and that is to separate rarely used files from commonly used files and put rarely used files to the area on the disk where transfer is slower and commonly used files to the outer tracks where transfer rates are double that of inner tracks. When you think about it - it should intuit to be correct. The UltimateDefrag Help Guide explains it all.

There's more to creating a high performance disk than just "defragging".

We will soon be publishing such performance improvement results - in the meantime you could do some testing yourself with this little utility called readfile: http://www.winimage.com/readfile.htm

Thanks
Rob
DiskTrix

 

Welcome to Wilders. I hope you visit often, and I wish your outfit best success.

I never had the idea that the starter of this thread was a shill. In my experience, shills are usually highly skilled techies in disguise. To me OliverK is just an over-enthusiastic user who discovered a new toy & wanted to share it with others.

Yes, I've used Diskeeper. However, in order to do what you say, DK required me to let it run a process in the background at all times, for several days, so that it could *observe* which programs I use most often.

I didn't want another process running in the background, so I avoided that DK feature. I would prefer that the defragger would simply give ME the option to list those processes which I want to load the fastest. Why go all the way around the elbow to get to the thumb? Just ASK the user!

Does UltDefrag prioritize processes by use of a background surveillance, as does DK? Otherwise ---- HOW exactly does UltDefrag do this job?

 

UltimateDefrag does NOT run as a service. You either start it manually or using its scheduling which uses Windows Task scheduler so does not have its own service running. There is nothing running it the background so there is no added overhead or potential causes of instability.

UltimateDefrag does give you the option to choose which processes load the fastest and that is the main concept behind the product. You specify which folders and program you want the best performance from - You can select entire folders, individual files, file types e.g. all .EXE files or even files you use most on a daily basis (this simply queries Last Access time stamps).

In most instances - statistically speaking - 95 to 99% of the files you accessed in the past 7 days, 14 days, 30 days or whatever period are the files you are most likely to use the most. In my opinion the added "work" required to make this more accurate by "observing" which files are used most often may not be worth that extra work i.e. at some point you receive diminished returns for no added performance or statistically significant accuracy.

UltimateDefrag has a "fast archive" option so that if you select days since access as your method of putting unused files to the inner tracks, then any files that are in there that do happen to get accessed between defrags are simply swapped out and become part of your most often used files. As a file exceeds the days since use threshold it then gets swapped over into the archive section. It's a dynamic process that means a very small number of files are swapped back and forth (between often used and rarely used) during a defrag. 98 or so percent of the files tend to stay either in your "most used" and "least used" categories most of the time.

So to get to the point and answer your question either 1. You decide which files you want performance or 2. Have UltimateDefrag decide based simply upon last access times and dates.

No background processes - no "observing".

Rob
DiskTrix