UltimateDefrag - is this the best defragger ever?

See post 298.

 

Thinking about buying your product but do I have flaxability in when I run it, on schedule or manually or does it always run in background? I want to run C defrag on manual basis since I use virtualization program that I must stop in order to defrag. And, for my other partitions I want to run them on schedule. Is this possible and thanks.

Gary

 

WELCOME ROB F

say the true... after checked almost all defrager out there...the most efficient is the one provide by DISKTRIX...
no background slow down service etc...and pc run the faster after usuing DISKTRIX ultimate defrag.
i uses consolidate defualt only , i also wounder under "consolidate " option what can be tick " V " in order to get the most of it...

also ...what is the best defrag mehod for home user...what method amoung all the option there...


cheers

 

Gary - UltimateDefrag does not run as a background service and only runs either manually or via regular Windows scheduling. We have deliberately stayed away from running as a service. So the program has zero footprint on the operating system unless it's running.

 

Consolidate is the best option for a regular home user.

To get the most out of it, I would select files for archive that have not been used in the past 30 or 60 days, and you can also add any other filetypes or folders e.g. *.ZIP files.

Then just run Consolidate - Respect Archive, Directories Next To MFT. All archive files will go to archive and all other files by mutual exclusion will go to the outer tracks - so automatically, your most used files are in the high performance area of your drive.

 

I am a PD 2008 user.
Yes. It has all those options. It will defrag the hiberfil, pagefile, etc offline also. I have tried them all.

Lately, I have been scheduling reboot with offline defrag, followed by a defrag with shutdown at completion every night. I know it isn't necessary and is probably silly. I just want to keep everything as "perfect as possible".

I am not really qualified to pronounce any defragger as "the best". I can just say that PD 2008 seems to work perfectly under Vista with SP1. Since I bought it, have had to really deal with my "obsessive defragging disorder" on all 4 of my hardrives.

 

I hear you. I've had a defragging disorder since the MS-DOS days. That's a heck of a long time to have such a disorder. I've probably spent a year cumulatively watching drives defrag.

I felt like I had to do something constructive with this disorder and none of the products I used over the years quite satisfied what I felt needed to be done to defrag and optimize a drive.... hence... UltimateDefrag... and it still isn't quite where I want it to be. Look out for even neater features in the future.

See post 298 - we'll be doing some pretty neat things at boot time real soon. PD does a great job of boot time and it suits the smartplacement strategy perfectly, however with the way drives are laid out with UltimateDefrag different things need to be considered with placement of MFT and page file. We'll be optimizing those positions according to data distribution on the drive.

 

where do u select "select files for archive that have not been used in the past 30 or 60 days" ?

i uses c:\ for OS + couple basix programs... no *.zip there or *.rar or *.mp3 ...etc...so what type of files i should add there?

there is also tools>>option up high where u can select things...never touch it...can u be more explain ?

10x

 

Under options goto archive and choose "past days data was not used" rather than "% least frequently used data" or "GB of least used data".

Then set "high Performance" to one day less. I currently have HP set at 25 days and Archive set at 26 for C:

 

10x mate ... where i set ""high Performance" to one day less" ?

 

Is it advisable to turn off windows prefetching and uncheck Respect Layout.ini when using UD? I'm quite concerned about how that would impact my computer's boot up.

 

On page 3 of tutorial#5 it say's,
Go to tools,options and select respect layout. ini.When you defrag it will layout the layout.ini files first right at the beginning of your drive.The performance increase is quite remarkable.
Do you think this is wrong?You also said to turnoff prefetching.I'm running Vista and this is called Superfetch.The reason i'm asking those questions is i've only just installed UD in the last few days.I'm learning the program that's all.

 

Not sure why you are saying that laying out the layout.ini files at the very beginning of the drive is wrong? layout.ini is the optimal file layout as "compiled" by the operating system.

We never said to turn off prefetching or Superfetch. These are best things to ever happened to improve the performance of the Windows operating system. Leave these on.

We did say to turn off BootOptimize. The program prompts you to do this when you first run it. The reasoning here is that every 3 days Windows does a bootoptimize where it attempts to optimize the layout and sequence of the files used during boot. it only does a partial job and puts them in a free space it finds on the disk. This is actually away from the "fastest" outer edge of the drive. The layout.ini already has the order optimized for boot and when we layout those files we place them in the same order as bootoptimize does and on the fastest part of the drive and we do the rest of the layout.ini in the optimal layout defined by the layout.ini file.

 

Giving it free to licensed users I should Damn Well hope so, and It should be incremented into a new build, not an Add on, What the hecks up with you people

 

I was only answering what bman412 was saying that's all.

 

Not being an expect on what "should" have been I think that Disktrix made the correct decision. I would rather have UD2008 now and have to wait for the add on than have had to have waited for a version with the add on. In the meantime just use PD or any other popular defrag program to defrag off-line. The high performance/archive split is what makes UD stand out and for my money UD2008 is a big improvement on the previous version and on other defrag programs.

 

Ah yes. I see that now. It just doesn't read that way.

 

Yes it will be integrated into a new build. It has to be with the way the interface will work.

 

Thats cool then , However is there any chance of a New GUI, as the Current one looks (*Cough) rather Gay Or as though its been drawn by some Kindergarten Kid with Crayons

 

I'm still experimenting with the features and trying to do some custom placements of my own preferences and so far so really good. I trust that the files disk wheel is accurate to point some degree plus or minus but close enough to true for an accurate determination that they are WHERE they are as indicated.

If that rings true it's a huge help in manipulating files/folders according to what best can improve optimum possible performance.

Overall, very technical and exciting improvements, Cheers.

 

Rob_F, I have a problem with Schedule.
I have three hard disks and want to schedule all to run at the same time. I created only one schedule to run consolidate defrag in all drives at 02:30 AM everyday but when UD start I see only run analyse in the last drive and stop. UD don't run any defrag in any drive. If I remove one disk from schedule the same occurs on the second disk (analyse only and no defrag in any drive). Defrag only runs if I schedule just one drive.
I tried 3 schedules at the same time but windows start UDefrag.exe 3 times and UD freeze.
Also, UD have problems to change schedule settings on Windows Vista. I try change the schedule to run 02:00 AM instead 02:30 AM but it's not function. I need change directly on schedule tasks on control panel/administrative tools.
This part of UD have the same problem since UD 1.XX.

 

Hey Screamer thanks for your tutorial way back in the thread.

So when you have a particular program that has been placed in the High Performance area and have deselected it from being defragged will there be a need to defrag in the future?

What should the settings be now that the program has been placed there. I saw a reply from you that said to deselect custom and place a value of 0% in the High Performance "Automatic" box.

I read the entire post and I am not sure on how to proceed.

Thanks,
Rob

 

This is a main of it (number of writes), but there are things that can quite easily accelerate fragmentation.

Filesystem write activity has a negative impact (eg a program trying to write data at the same time).

If the Write cache is enabled in Windows (can consolidate allocation and mutliple writes to a single file, but falls apart why trying to write multiple writes to multiple files, eg p2p program downloading a few files at once)

If there is room for a new file to be place contiguously OR an existing file modified contiguously.

How much free space there is and how contiguous (the windows NTFS drive likes to find more space than is needed as a buffer incase of immediate file growth, which in turn compounds the issue of find large enough free space)

If there are any sparse file holding space allocation (ntfs cannot pre-allocate block though).

Probably more that I cannot remember off the top of my head.

 

Hi folks, I come looking for help with UltimateDefrag's settings.

Mostly I've been very impressed with the program, but I was wondering if its possible to exclude hidden folders from the scan, specifically c:\$extend\$objld

I love the concept of what UD does, but each time I run it it seems to get stuck when it gets to c:\$extend:$O:$INDEX_ALLOCATION
It doesn't hang, but it sits there moving/consolidating that particular file for hours. I've got a 120GB HD, which is pretty full, only about 10GB free.

The $extend folder doesn't show up in the file explorer window in UD, so I was wondering if anyone knew of any manual way to add to the Exclude list?

 

what happens if you open C: and go tools/folder options/ and turn on show hidden files and uncheck hide protected operating system files ?
Can UD now see these folders and files allowing you to exclude them in options.

My experience is that UD takes a number of days/weeks to settle down and gets slowly better over time i.e your problem may just go away in a few days.