Background defrag for large drive?

I have 256 GB SSD drive which I don't defrag and 1 TB HDD drive that contains mainly data files, virtual machines, videos, music, etc. I basically never defrag this drive either because the defrag would take several days. Is there a small program or service that can run in the background and defrag this drive/consolidate free space on it (including moving large files around). Since the defrag is unlikely to complete in one session (I prefer to turn off the computer for nights), it would be good if it could pick up where it left off after the computer is restarted, and also defrag files as they are added or modified (downloads, VM files, etc.)?

notes: I'm defragging the drive now, or at least trying to consolidate free space on it because AX64 had a problem making a backup to it, and I thought maybe its very fragmented free space was an issue. also, all my external drives are so full that I cannot just copy all the data to one of them and back to make the files contiguous.

 

Perfectdisk will likely do the consolidation and 'real time' defrag (careful of its boot time defrag if using AX64 though). There is a free version, though I don't think it will consolidate files on anything other than the C drive, and also won't do the 'real time' defrag.

Diskeeper will likely do similarly, though I imagine its consolidation won't be as thorough.

You might also check out DIRMS/Buzzsaw.

 

I only use defrag software on demand because I run light virtualization software like Shadow Defender. There's no reason to have defragging software running in the background defragging my drive while in a virtual environment because all those changes will be reversed once I reboot. That would just be a waste of CPU resources, and unneeded ware on my drive.

I use Auslogics Diskdefrag. It works extremely fast. It should take no where close to the days you believe it would take to defrag your drive. Maybe a few hours at most. I have a 600 GB SATA drive on my Laptop, and it usually takes about a minute to defrag my drive. I run it often on demand though when not in Shadow Mode (Virtual Environment).

 

UltraDefrag for me is the best.

Panagiotis

 

thanks for the replies. i'll look into Perfectdisk and Diskeeper, although they may be too substantial for my like. Dirms/Buzzsaw seem like dead projects (not for Windows 7). I did use Auslogics Diskdefrag in the end, which while Windows was offline and I had moved all large files (about 400 GB in total) away from the target drive to external HDD, took about 30 minutes for the defrag only part, but over night (~8 hours) to optimize free space (the free space was super fragmented). I also installed IObit's Smart Defrag 2, which is supposed to run in the background and defrag the target drive when the computer is idle. we'll see - it certainly didn't do anything substantial when I first installed it (before the offline defrag), but now that I've consolidated the free space and defragged all files offline, maybe it'll be enough to keep maintain the parition.