UltimateDefrag - is this the best defragger ever?

If it is so easy to fix, why haven't they responded to the many posts over the last several months regarding this bug? When, if ever, are they going to fix it?

 

Trailblazerman, MerleOne,

I received a reply that they'll work on this problem, and for now you'll need to select RESET DEFAULTS in the boot time screen to restore the correct MFT size.

silver0066,

I have no answer to your questions since I don't work on that part of the project.

 

It's what I have done so far, anyway I always select the default for MFT defrag. The only other problem I had so far was with a Buffalo External HDD which is not properly recognized at boot time. So UD cannot defrag its MFT. But it's Buffalo fault, even if they insists their HDD is working fine.

 

Thanks, Isso. I appreciate your making an effort on this. All I do is click on the cancel button and go about other business.

 

I am thinking about disabling the built in xp defragger (I am not exactly sure how), and then just run ultimate defrag whenever I feel the need.

Has anyone here done this?

 

It's an option somewhere. You can do that but you will lose the ability to defrag removable media, which is sometimes useful.

 

Never before since first learning to defrag at all is defragging with UD actually FUN! and EXCITING! to experience some real results and realize definite gains instead of the old way of "well it's defragged now, won't have to do that again for while", with no real gain unless it was totally scattered amd cluttered.

To be honest when PerfectDisk first came out and i tried it, i was truly amazed that defragging could produce such a kind of quick response result like that. I had problems later with it's early versions so moved over to Diskeeper which didn't hold a candle to what i got from PD, however it was ok for a time but the background running started hampering my resources and conscience so out the door it went too.

It wasn't untill i got hold of DiskTrix's Ultimate Defrag that beginning with the fascination of it's circular representation of the hard disk, it got me thinking that if they can fashion a defragger that close to the real layout of the disk platter and detail indicators of the actual files on it too, that there may be a chance this one would prove radically different, and as i learned of it's settings more and more and began experiementing with different vector sets of file placements and methods began to realize some astronomical gains in both pure desktop, applications performance and less time spent re-defragging so often thereafter. Plus this one didn't have to be running in the background to defrag everytime a temporary file came down the tubes from the net to the TIF folder which i though was stupid anyway since whether defragged or not they always got erased and disposed of anyway, so why bother running a background service for that?

More to come.................

 

EASTER,

With all due respect I am puzzled by your extremely enthusiastic comments (regarding UD) because as much as I've tried I haven't experienced any noticeable performance improvement. After using my PC (heavily) every day for an entire month without any defragging, I tried several different defrag-consolidation configurations with UD and after each run completed, I can't honestly say that I notice any performance improvement from any of them! So I would ask what are your disk specs (total size and free space)? I would also like to know your defrag-consolidation config (settings) as specified in UD.

Finally, regarding your "fascination of it's (UD's) circular representation of the hard disk" I simply don't understand what UD's single-platter display actually represents when used with the typical multi-platter drive!?!?

Aaron

 

Oh Well Aaron,
Let them believe what they want.
Disk Defragmentation is, and always has been a mind game, nothing worthy to dish any money for.

You know, some people get stress relief from staring at a defragger for hours and hours, they believe they're building up something, which of course isn't true, but some people's brains release adrenaline when looking at the nice colours of a defragger at 'work'.

 

Or Raid 0 Setups using 2 or more drives...

 

I have actually sent a few emails to UD regarding this issue, but never received any reply. Perhaps Isso can tell us all (here and now) how their single-platter defrag-consolidation display can possibly represent a typical multi-platter drive (not to mention a multi-drive RAID)!

 

Hopefully Pete -- Isso, is Pete's assumption correct? If that's the answer, it therefore follows that UD really knows where the outer and inner tracks are for each drive-platter. If that's true, how does UD get that cylinder-related info? I would like to hear that explanation (along with the related implications of UD's disk-layout display).

Thanks in advance Isso!

---

PS. Still waiting on EASTER's reply as well.

 

Okay there is a few that's free this one and UltraDefrag OpenSource. O&O Defrag 2000 is another one. SmartDefrag from IOBIT I didn't see much use for that one though it scheduler seems to works well on the server. So Ultimate Defrag is better..

 

Sorry to be blunt, but I admit I would much prefer to know what EASTER settings are and for which kind of usage (gaming, office, etc.) than discussing the relevancy of a virtual circle GUI vs rectangle GUI.

 

Platters about:

 

Hi guys, interesting discussion

Regarding circular representation used in UltimateDefrag - of course it is not meant to display the exact position of each file on the physical platter(s). It is meant for visual demonstration of high speed and low speed disk areas. The post from majoMo exhaustively explains the multi-platter issue. Try any disk speed utility and you'll see the speed gradually decreasing from the start of the drive till the end.

As for the speed improvement after defragmentation:

If your drive has plenty of free space (more than 70..80%) and the files aren't heavily fragmented you'll probably notice little or no difference after defragmentation.
But in most cases the drives have less free space, have fragmented files, or have non-optimal placement of files. And the difference between high speed and low speed areas of modern HDDs is normally 1.3-2.0 times, and this phenomena allows to improve HDD speed by placing mostly accessed files to the faster tracks.
Besides, if you have complex programs that load high number of files, a grouped placing of those files (preferably in a sequence that resembles the loading sequence) makes the program faster because there is no or little excessive disk head movement.
So even if the drive is already completely defragmented you can significantly improve the system speed by file placement optimization.

The idea to create such a defragger actually came after noticing that lot of people experience slow loading of PC games and brief hangups during the game as the HDD was trying to read something. Some research revealed that proper placement of the files used by those games significanlty improves the loading times and eliminates the hangups. This applies to any program, including OS.

And of course defragmentation itself improves the speed too.

Frankly at the moment when I started developing UD I've had single experience defragmenting the HDD of my 386 based machine back in 199? that resulted in corrupted system, and since that I never did any defragmenting and always considered it to be snakes oil. But during development I've started to realize that it does make difference, and mostly the file placement rather than defragmentation itself. And I'm proud that UD was one of the first defraggers that used file placement optimization. Really lot of competitors copied ideas from it afterwards, but still UD is most powerful in this regard (I know I'm bragging, but I just can't help myself

 

Isso, I'd appreciate it if you would address my specific questions in post #792.

 

I didn't notice any difference either, I'm using Perfect Disk 10 Professional and I'm going to have to say they have the same results after Defrag when it comes to performance, and yes my drives always become heavily fragmented because I'm constantly downloading and testing this and that every 5 minutes, not to mention the torrents I download which always fragments my drives!

EDIT: Well now that I think about it I did notice that UltimateDefrag Completes its operations faster, but faster is not always better, Has anyone ever experienced any kind of data loss with this software? I didn't loose any, but its kinda scary how fast it moves files around....Its like it has a built in accelerator that hyper moves files...

 

Aaron, Peter,

It seems I haven't explained fully, sorry.

Peter is correct - UD display is representation of a cylinder (platter) of the HDD. And it's perfectly ok to represent multi-platter drives as a single, because the multiple platters are accessed in parallel.

There is one problem that prevents perfectly correct representation of the file positions, and that is - we can't find out the real outer and inner diameters of the HDD platters. This results in incorrect relative angular positions. Partitioned drive leads to the same error. But it's not that important.
The main purpose of the round view is to distinctively represent the outer Fast areas and inner Slow areas.

Hope this makes sence now.

 

Exactly my same findings Pete. If it's not accurate in the least why do they incorporate it as a visual aid for us?

Still, UD does what it claims, for me anyway. I keep DriveSnapshot backups (.SNA ) and at times it nearly encompasses the entire disk with RED, so i archive it to the more central area, and whether a move of imagination or reality, when finished, it shows they been moved away from the front part of the disk.

EASTER

 

Same here!

I really don't give a crap what "floor" the data is on. I assume that a given sector on the "top" platter is clustered in the diagram along with the sectors directly underneath it on the platters below. Outer is outer and inner is inner regardless, no? How precise does the representation have to be, as long as you are not deluded about the importance of it and that it can't represent more complex setups?

 

Whoa

Let's be civil here.

I use several methods but for sake of this discussion i make my settings above with 50 -60% High Performnce, then i choose in archive .SMA/Folder of Backup Image only then choose CONSOLIDATE in the main setting, then leave the archive unticked, but on High Perfromance place those files i want close up front to outer disk. It takes 3 hours for me because my backup has a lot of files needing placed deeper inside (archived), and when done, the indicator verifies file placements have been moved to my perferences.

Sorry i don't explain myself better but this app defragger is still new to me and i'm not Isso the developer, perhaps he can better detail what i'm doing in this case better then me.

 

With automatic selected in high performance, I wonder if that's not a big factor in your defrags taking some 3 hours. With the "usage" criterion being limited to the accessed time stamp, it's a shame since I would expect that your accessed time stamps are being regularly moved with all of that security software you have installed.

I wish these usage settings in Options could be based on modified date as an option, like in the recency options, they could be much more useful then, particularly in the case of a data partition.

As far as system partition, I MIGHT be willing to sacrifice a little CPU bandwidth for the option of a background service that tracked access by some other means than the nowadays flawed method of looking at the access time stamp.