Perfectdisk still best?

I have been trialing perfectdisk 10 and i wonder if people still think it is best.
Out of all the defragmenters i have tried, it is by far the slowest. The estimated time just rises by hours. It has one of the slowest analysis i have ever seen as well. It seems the developers are lowering resource usage as much as possible and it isn't good if it makes the speed drop significantly. I defragmented with O&O just before and it lowered fragmentation to 0.1% which perfectdisk also reports. At first i thought the new throttling was slowing it down, but even after disabling it, perfectdisk took forever (it hasn't even finished one run yet!). I like the information and stats it provides, but its pointless to keep it just to benchmark other defraggers.

 

IMHO PerfectDisk is starting to get bloated and very slow, the last time I tried it. O&O, JkDefrag and Defraggler are all excellent without the bloat.

 

I tried it several weeks ago and did not like it
Now I m using JkDefrag and it's perfect

 

Been using PD ever since v7 and will continue to. But each to his own.

 

Perfect Disk will always be slower on the first defrag of a partition.
But over a series of runs, PD is alleged to do a bettr job.

As I recall, Raxco has an article at their web site explaining this.

The thing that matters is the performance gain after the defrags.

The speed also depends on th particular partition.

My sister has 1 partition that takes a very long time to defrag, I know not why. Likely due to lots of small files scattered all over the place.

I just did a defrag a few daze ago, and there is a marked improvement.

Indeed, I had created a new logical drive on a 10000 rpm disk, previously, I had been using only 7200 rpm.

I then moved several GB to the new drive and moved the variable-length pagefile to the new drive. Wow, did tat ever improve things!.

Of course with all this file moving, several of the drives needed a defrag. So I defragged them all, and there was additional improvement.

One must remember

For particular drives, some layout algorithms will be better than others, but the PD algorithm, is likely, in general, as good as it gets. In any case, few users would have the know how to select amongst alternative algorithms.

Another positive about PD is that they have a toll-free support number, at least in the USA, and seem to be very responsive to email questions.

 

I forgot to mention, if one wishes to compare speeds, one must make an image backup and test against the same starting point.

Also, running defrag prog A AFTER running defrag prog B, without going back to the origibal image, will likely bias the results in favor of one, or the other program.

My recollection is that Raxco has a free program that you can use to randomly fragment a drive. You can then make several test passes, but one still must make an image of the starting point to fairly compare progs.

One must make image backups, in case something goes awry.

 

IMO IOBit SmartDefrag does at least as good a job as PerfectDisk free of charge.

 

puran defrag is a fantastic program imo give it a shot. i use bot at times. but i agree perfectdisk is getting a bit sluggish feeling and i hope they stop adding more and more to it. i only want a defrag program nothing more!! i will say i have tried pretty much every one out there and imo the above 2 i mentioned still do the best job for me

 

Thanks, ill try the tool and report back my results.

 

I use IObit Smart Defrag, it is the fastest and does better than PerfectDisk.

 

Here's another freebie to have a look at: http://download.cnet.com/UltimateDefrag-Freeware-Edition/3000-2094_4-10582157.html

 

JkDefrag
Small and portable, perfect for a USB stick.

 

Even though I have used it for a number of years, I have never felt the desire to look elsewhere.

However, I do not know what to make of this "StealthPatrol" in the latest release.

 

I used perfectdisk and puran since they are supposedly the best at optimizing. According to perfectdisk, puran offers 0.2% better performance and 0.4% better free space fragmentation. Yet perfectdisk has no problem undoing these positive changes .

 

I don't defrag very often, but when I do I use Puran's boot-time defragger.

 

PD 10 drops a 110 meg installation folder into it's Programs/Raxco folder which doesn't seem to be needed?

Anyways I deleted it and PD 10 still works OK.

110 meg less to defrag, image and av scan if you use an av.

 

Puran does a more thorough job than pd in half the time.

 

PD is not undoing anything.

When you use any defrag program, you are starting from scratch using different layout algorithms.

The ONLY way to compare is to start with the same image.
And, s is stated at the PD web site, their first pass may take longer, but, in general, if you do N consecutive passes with PD, the restore the original image and do N consecutive passes with another defrag program, it is likely that overall PD will not be slower and may do a better job. As I recall PD has an example of this at their web site.

 

What evidence do you have?

The issue is NOT how quickly fragments are eliminated.
That is secondary to the importance of the layout on performance.

Sophisticated tools have to measure the potential affect on performance.
As I recall, PD provides a tool that can be used to guesstimate performance.

 

PD, and other programs, leave behind installation directories.
In PDs case, I ran into this in a Vista install. And KIS 2009 picked on 1 or 2 files as riskware in the install directory. I asked PD and was told I could delete the directory.

 

I am running the latest PD10 Professional, and it never takes long to defrag or analyze.
Of course it will take a long time on the first defrag of any hard drive because it is repositioning many files according to its placement algorythm. This will also be affected by what your "recent files" and "rarely used files" time setting are.

I leave mine on "Stealth Patrol" and I never even notice it running. Every time I check my drives (5 of them) they are all near 0% dfragmentation (maybe up to say .4%) and I never had to interface with the program at all.

BTW, Perfectdisk will even "screw up" its own "better" defrag if you choose "defrag only" . It will then just do a straight ahead defrag down to 0%. If you then subsequently immediately choose a "smartplacement" defrag, it will sometimes leave it at up to like 0.2% fragmented. This is because lower defragmentation is not necessarily more efficient. Placement counts also.

 

I created an image and tested puran and perfectdisk with raxco's scrambler. PD reports puran offers 1%-2% better performance and free space fragmentation, but PD organizes files better according to the drive map. I have a 10GB+ 7z file which neither can seem to defrag. Puran skips it and pd refuses to give up.

 

I recall a similar problem when I was using PD8. Then I tried UD, but it could not do a boot-time (meta files) defrag. Earlier this year I got Puran v6 and it seems to do a super job!

 

I dont recall exactly, but I believe I tried only the previous version of PD (PD 8?), and not the current version. On my system Diskeeper ran the best with least resource usage on auto defrag, so I've been using DK, now DK2009.

 

Coolio I wonder why you asked?
I have the similar results with your tests.
I have licenses of both PD10 and Puran 6.

I find that Puran is the best defragger available today; very fast, extremly thorough defraging, good file placement, and the most flexible schedules available.

Panagiotis