Best defrag program now?

lol this is it with defraggers, which is the prettiest, as there is rarely any solid proof on huge performance benefits with any of them

 

There are so many freeware options, I believe it would be insane to pay for a defragger.

The best include:

Auslogics, Puran, IObit Smart Defrag and Defraggler.

Ever user has their preferences, after trying them all I prefer.
1. Auslogics
2. IObit Smart Defrag
3. Puran
4. Defraggler

PerfectDisk, 0&0 Defrag Pro, UltimateDefrag and Diskeeper are a way too bloated with unnecessary junk.

0&0 Defrag Freeware is too limited in features and MyDefrag is too complicated for most users. UltimateDefrag Freeware is out-dated.

However the new freeware Glarysoft Disk SpeedUp is looking nice and maybe just as good as the other defraggers.

Thanks.

 

O&O Defrag for me

 

I always found PerfectDisk is does a "PERFECT job" (for me anyway on my system). Your mileage may vary .

 

actually imo perfectdisk is very reasonable they always have 20-30% off and can be found for 19.95 MINUS the discount not at all a bad price for a really good program. the key is to find discounts these days.

 

For free it's hard to beat Ultimate Defrag Free Edition 1.72. It has far more options and a better help file than any of the others I've tried. The interface is also unique. It's round like a hard drive. But there are some problems. It's getting pretty old now and I don't think it's supported. It quit working for me on Vista, but I still use it on my mom's XP SP3 system and it does a superb job. I actually prefer it over the PerfectDisk commercial version which I'm using now.

http://download.cnet.com/UltimateDefrag-Freeware-Edition/3000-2094_4-10582157.html

 

the one MAJOR issue o&o has or i actually might use it is it doesnt release the memory used when you close the program. say you use it and do a full defrag and it uses up say 80+mb of ram or more from the defrag when its done it will stay at that memory usage it never goes back to the idle usage unless you actually close the main running process. imo this should have been fixed a long time ago and its been since version 13 if i remember correctly

 

Well, here's the thing. Unless you have a pretty badly fragmented drive, like the ones shown on disktrix's website. You won't see a whole lot of improvement. Yes, there is a definitive improvement, but, the gains are small.

Many system resources such as caches in the o/s and on the drive, + any cache within the application you're using definitely tend to mask the effects of all but the most severely fragmented drive.

With some applications loading a 900+ MB texture file and other things, I might see a 45 second load time - on defragmented drive vs 47 on a non-defragmented drive.

I have seen somewhat better times, say 40 second load time on the same application if I put the used data on the outer tracks as opposed to a 50 second load time on the inner tracks and with fragmentation there.


IMHO, to the everyday user, a highly optimized mechanical hard drive still won't give a wow factor. An SSD will.

 

I have been using Auslogics for a while now and haven't had any issues with it.

 

DefragExpress from DiskTrix is excellent to minimize re-defragmentation time after one full defrag.

 

PerfectDisk bloated? Why?

 

Compare the resource usage to Auslogics, Puran or SmartDefrag to PerfectDisk when loading its services and drivers, then compare the resource usages and CPU used when performing a background defrag process then you will see what I mean. I tested most of the popular defraggers and Auslogics is the lightest and gets the job done without the bloat. Also can perform a background defrag process twice as fast as PerfectDisk.

Thanks.

 

Yes, most certainly, but the level of optimization reached with PD used to be far better that Auslogics with several strategies according to the type of parition. Hence more CPU. For instance, PD regroups directories, which sometimes make a big difference, not Auslogics.

This being said, I don't use PD any longer, because I was fed up paying high upgrade costs for very little improvements from one version to another. I now rely mostly on DefragExpress and Auslogics for single file defrag. What's important to me is that re-defragmentation is as quick as possible and moves as little data as possible (because I use sector-based imaging and want to keep incremental images little).

 

Same here and I m not planning to change it.

 

My suggestion would be Puran Defrag (boot time defrag) + Page Defrag
or UBCD4win with a defrag program plugin.

 

as far as i know, Puran is the only free defrag that defrag system files at boot times.

 

I have to say, having worked in IT for a long time now, the whole defrag discussion has always been very frustrating. Unless you have a computer that is constantly writing and/or deleting data it's pretty debatable whether you even need to use it. I've never seen a huge performance gain using one...nothing that was noticeable. A few seconds here and there, to me, doesn't justify the added wear and tear on the disk. Like imaging tools, it's hard to get advice on defraggers as everyone has their own choice and it's really a matter of personal preference. Still, with the amount of good free ones out there, you are better off using one than not using one. I do a defrag manually maybe once a month at this point. I don't use any real-time or background defragging. I work with systems that write and delete data 24x7 and they are never badly defragged...my home PC gets maybe less than 1% of the same abuse my work servers do and defragging is therefore less necessary. Still, I do it, but I'm not concerned if I can shave half a second off opening an app or booting my PC.

 

I think defrag is not just about speed up boot time or speed up launching applications. I noticed that after i used PerfectDisk the antivirus software performs a much faster full scan and this has nothing to do with some antiviruses scans only the new and changed files. Im talking about first scans.

Also it makes big improvements on older computers. Im not saying that PerfectDisk is a must have but in some cases even with a free defrag program defrag is needed.

 

Depending on how often files might change on your disk, you can get the same disk performance with Auslogics, SmartDefrag, Puran, Defraggler, etc.

One thing that I noticed about PerfectDisk is sometimes it would say that your disk is in "Peek Performance" but you could run one of the other defraggers like Auslogics and it would suggest to defrag and could defrag past the point of PerfectDisk. Then you could run PerfectDisk again and it would still say that your disk is in "Peek Performance"??

This is one of the reasons that I gave up on PerfectDisk along with the other reasons you have already mentioned.

I tried DefragExpress and was really impressed on how fast it could defrag my disks and after I ran Auslogics and others they said my disks didn't need defragmentation. Because it agrees with the rest. It is worth buying if you want a paid solution.

Thanks.

 

Just for curiosity, is there any way to launch Windows 7 built-in defragmenter at boot-time or from a boot cd?

 

No, it cannot do either of these functions and that has been one of the stronger selling points for third party defragging tools.

Edit: There appears to be a way to create a WinPE boot CD and include the defrag.exe from Windows 7:

http://virtualfoundry.blogspot.com/2010/01/build-windows-7-pe-boot-cd-with-defrag.html

 

You can add UltraDefrag.

For who works under Win XP, using the excellent ScanDefrag does the task: defragmentation before login with e.g. MyDefrag and boot time defrag with PageDefrag.

 

Different defrag tools employ different defragment/optimize strategies. It's not recommended to use two (or more) different defrag tools, as one will probably undo what the other did.

You should measure which does the best job by benchmarking the system performance.

 

I've used O&O free, WinDefrag, MyDefrag, Defraggler, Auslogic, iObit (sorry) and Puran.
I keep Puran with closed eyes.

Important features as scheduling and boot time defragmentation.