DefragExpress Launched

Hi Isso,will the method you mentioned above by temporary disabling VSS and running your product mess up my restore points?

 

@rookieman : it will not really mess them up, it will erase all restore points and stop creating new ones. So you better have a recent full backup (Image for Windows 2, Drive Snapshot, Paragon Drive Image Express, Keriver 4, whatever).

 

Thanks for the reply on this.
2. If you are sure you don't need the current restore points, you can temporary turn System restore off, defragment the drive and then turn it back on.
As mentioned above he said to disable VSS and run DE and turn VSS back on.If I did that and created a restore point today and another again tomorrow would that be risky and I would only have 2 restore points?

 

MerleOne - if you are sure that you have VSS off, then the only reason for incomplete or slow defrags may be some process that does lot of HDD write operations during defragging. You might check it too.

rookieman - disabling System Restore will delete all restore points as MerleOne already mentioned (actually you'll get that warning if you try to do it). So if you want to disable System Restore make sure you have backuped everything before doing it.
I'm not sure I understood your question about creating two restore points, sorry.

Also please note that my advice applies only for Vista. For XP you can always leave System Restore on - defragging works without any problem.

 

Thanks for the reply. I don't know what would be the cause of HDD write on my VISTA system and I am thinking of something else : I use Anvir Task Manager, which monitor disk activity among other things. When DE is active and "pausing" during phase 2, there is only CPU activity (a lot) due to DE, and almost no HDD activity.

I'll try to have another look, firstly in fast mode to see if it is better.

 

Isso,

Really do like this software and it seems to be improving my system performance with every run. I know it's not as powerful as UD but for me all I want from a defragger is a simple to use program and this seems to do the job perfectly for my requirements.

One question... it is creating a 1kb log file in C drive but on opening this file it is always empty and I don't see any option for turning this off. Not sure what it is there for.

 

BTW, it seems that DE uses an activation mechanism similar to UD. With UD, one had a given number of activations, which is useful, for instance when UD gets unactivated for no obvious reason (this happened to me some weeks ago, may be a registry cleaner problem), or when reinstalling the system. Is it the same number with DE ?

 

zarzenz,

Thank you. It shouldn't create any file, I'll check it and fix in the next version.

MerleOne,

Yes, DE uses exactly the same activation system as UD.

 

Thanks Isso,

I just did another check... I deleted the log file... then I ran DE to just analyze this time, and it still created the log file again.

 

OK thank you zarzenz - this will be fixed in the next version.

 

That's cool.

Can I just add my thanks to you Isso for being so available on here to pick up these questions. This is quite wonderful that a new program is released and the developer is on hand to answer these points and then to work out fixes etc.

I really appreciate this and think you have done a great job with DE.

 

Me too...I now have rigs better defragged than ever before.

 

zarzenz, Baldrick - thank you! I'm really glad to receive positive feedback. Feel free to ask or comment - I'll be happy to answer.

 

Having done the base defrags to get them into the right condition I am awaiting the weekend to see what defragmentation has taken place compared to similar reviews with other defrags...and then I plan to run a maintenance defrag and see how long that takes/waht the end results are...before deciding on a schedule.

 

Just a question: with this version, is Distrix saying boot-time defragmentation is not necessary?

 

Exactly, just read post #21 from Isso, he explain why.

 

He was explaining about Windows' boot time optimize function, i.e., rearranging files used at boot time by looking at layout.ini and the option to enable the Windows functionality, which is disabled by default upon installation of DE.

Boot time defragmentation is another thing entirely, so I think TonyW's question still stands for Isso.

 

TonyW,

Boot time (offline) defragmentation is needed because there are a number of system files that cannot be defragmented under normal conditions. But I'd likely call this feature "nice to have" than "must have".

For DefragExpress is was decided to not include that module because of marketing reasons.

 

Thank you. That answers the question.

So if people really want boot-time defragmentation from their defragging software, they'll need UD or some other defragger.