UltimateDefrag - is this the best defragger ever?

Have just read thru your 23 posts on UD and found them very interesting.

I have raised this before but never reached any conclusion:

I have 5 gb of win xp and programs on C: (160 gb Seagate) with all data and pagefile sys on D: ( a 1 TB western digital) Using UD and having performance for C: 30 days or less and archive for 31 days or more plus a few wildcards has been my preferred option.

Reducing C: to 25 gb SEEMS to speed things up. Paperport loads in 3 seconds rather than 4, that sort of thing. Everything feels just that bit snappier.

any thoughts as to why using a smaller partition might make overall any faster ?
using 25 gb the archive data is closer to the edge but once stabilized there is very little movement in the archive.

any thoughts ?

 

Yes the principle at work here is seek confinement and actually the same principle as placing files at the outer band of the hard drive. Partitions are created cylindrically. So if you have a 250 Gb hard drive and create a 25 Gb partition then that partition is created at the outer cylinders but only span 10%. So your seek times are vastly reduced from a maximum of say 18 ms down to 2 ms because of the span of the partition which is only 10% of the entire physical disk. You've also got the fastest transfer times too.

When you create multiple partitions they are created in cylinders gradually moving inwards so if you have say 10 partitions, your seek time on all those parititons will be fast but each logical drive has a slower transfer rate and the 10th drive/parition will perform about half the speed as the outermost partition.

Hope this helps
Rob F
DiskTrix Inc.

 

Excellent - Thanks. In addition to extra speed I also get 2 bonuses (1) D: a place to dump old images and it takes far less time to clean empty space .



Having nothing better to do - I wonder where the optimal point is reached ? with 5 gb of OS and programs would 10 gb be better ? or 15 gb ? when I have time I will have to try different partition sizes.

Edit: 10 gb is working fine

 

Thank you for the response. I feel compelled to say, however, that I find it difficult to reconcile the reports by users in this thread with your report of 'the problem only occurring on 1 in 200-300 systems'.

In fact, by my count there are 8 UD users for whom the boot time defrag does *not* work versus 5 who have reported no issues with the module. Further, at least a couple of users have tried the module on different systems without success. After I installed UD 2008 and discovered the error, I experimented with it on several PCs but I was not able to get the boot time module to work on any of them.

So, hopefully, you can understand my confusion when I read that part of your post claiming, "...the boot time module has been demonstrated to properly work on a typical system" since I don't consider any of my systems to be "atypical". I further hope you can understand my dismay when I read, "We may or may not be able to correct this at this time..." since my presumption when purchasing software is that the developers thereof have the expertise to troubleshoot and correct bugs therein, at least those that most would consider to be *major* flaws (as in an entire module not functioning properly).

 

I completely agree with this post. If you do not fix the boottime defrag, then it is worthless. Several of your competitors have it working without problems.

Silver

 

I thought that the boot defrag with UD was different in that it allows the user to move the $mft and other files around and to change their order ? Do the other companies that you mention also allow this ?

 

Based on the number of tech support requests we have received on this - it equates to 1 in around 250 users. Inhouse we have throughly tested the boot time module on 30 systems (a variety of XP and Vista) without one reporting this error and none of the many additional systems we tested on gave this error.

Can you perhaps give us an outline of your system specs including OS, hard drive configuration etc.

Our very clever developer who created the boot time module is trying to correct this and I am sure he will come up with a solution in the not-too-distant future.

Also - can I suggest that you reformat one of your systems with a completely fresh install of your OS and test it then and let us know the results.

Thanks

 

Thanks Long View - yes UltimateDefrag is the only software product in the world that gives the user complete power to manipulate order and placement of system and meta files. With the exception of PerfectDisk (and I am sure that certain system nuances with individual systems also prevent this from running correctly on the occasional system) no other title does much at all with regard to the system files with the exception of defragging MFT & page file. If I am wrong I am happy to be corrected.

Thanks
Rob F
DiskTrix Inc.

 

What can i say,talking about PD 2008 with regard to boottime defrag,with my four rigs on only one bootdefrag works,with the others if i try to defrag, PD throw up messages like ''harddrive is dirty.....run chkdsk bla bla bla ''.
If i defrag after running chdsk /r it sometimes work but most of the time it did'nt, so to say that the PD bootimedefrag module is fragile is the least a big understatement,i think its a bad one from my personal experiences and after reading many complaints from other users.

 

Does UltimateDefrag boot defrag run on all of your systems?

 

There is also a nasty crash which occurs when you are trying to configure UD for partitions N:\ and higher.

I send you a couple of bug reports, but, indeed, never got any response, and, of course, the bug is still present.

 

Eventually i ran no bootdefrag at all,haven't done it with UD cause i use the free 1.72 version. I guess fileplacement to your needs have more impact on performance then defragging page and other systemfiles ( they become fragmented very slowly as compared to others like data files).

 

i'm really sad because nobody answer to me

i test ultimate defrag boot disk on 6 pc , 4 desktop and 2 laptop

and chkdsk c: /F

and i get everytime (this is in italian)

google

can somebody please tell what is it?

 

Mantra

when you run chkdsk /f do you get any error messages at that point or only when you log to the log ?

Are you able to check on any machines that do not have UD installed ?

On one of my machines I get no reported error when I run Chkdsk but when I check the log I get messages about minor inconsistencies in the index being corrected.

I have just checked a machine with a sold state drive for C: which has never had any defrag program
and it reads:

cleaning up minor inconsistencies on the drive
cleaning up 2 unused index entries from $SII of the file 0x9
cleaning up 2 unused index entries from $SDH of the file 0x9
cleaning up 2 unused security descriptors

If you get no error message when you run CHKDSK /F my guess is that there is no problem no matter what the log reads.

 

Long View
well when i run chkdsk /f i don't get errors
i give a look at the log and i found

without Ud no errors in the log

they are common, general on every xp

 

chkdsk reports are not always accurate if the disk/volume you check is not offline.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/837326/it
You should use Vrfydsk.exe instead to have accurate reports. You can download it from:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...69-57ff-4ae7-96ee-b18c4790cffd&displaylang=en

Panagiotis

 

i use chkdsk offline , i mean i give the command to check and it does during the boot

maybe Rob_F could know something

 

i did it too

 

You have got to be kidding. You want me to do a complete reformat to test your software!!! Not in a million years. I have hundreds of programs. You have been paid. You fix it!!

I am running XP SP3 on a pair of Raptors configured as Raid 0 if that will help you. I get the boot time defrag error on this setup and also on a stock Dell XPS Gen 2 laptop running XP SP3. That is a pretty common computer. Maybe you should get one and test your software.

 

Maybe you should checkout Puran Defrag 6.0.

 

UD does not allow this on my computers!. I can't even resize the MFT because that screen is stuck and and resizer will not move.

PerfectDisk and Puran Defrag will allow boottime defrag and Puran will allow placement of files to outer portions of disk.

 

is it trusty?
but you can 't move the mft , i mean move in an area of the hardisk

where does it put?

in puran defrag how can i put some files in the outer portions of the disk?

 

Took the words right out of my mouth! Years of computer usage/software purchases and this is the first time I've ever heard a software developer suggest that I reformat and do a fresh install of my OS in order to get a program to function properly. Sorry, but that is just a completely unreasonable request, IMHO.

There you go! One user who has gotten boot time defrag errors on two, relatively common, computers and another (namely, me) who has gotten errors on no less than SEVEN PCs on which I have installed UD 2008 just to see if I could get the boot time defrag module to work.

The PCs on which I've tried UD 2008 include the following:
1 - HP laptop running Vista SP1; 250GB HDD, two partitions
3 - Dell Dimensions running XP SP3; all with two internal HDDs, one partition
1 - Dell running XP SP2; one internal 160GB HDD, one partition
1 - HP laptop running MCE2k5; 160GB HDD, two partitions
1 - Dell running MCE2k5; one 120GB HDD, one partition

Again, like Silver, these are all pretty common computers and configurations.

 

I'm not asking you to test our software. It has been thoroughly tested. I am telling you that as long as no other software has altered the basic "out of the box" O/S then the boot time module will work.

I don't appreciate your sarcasm. I have a personal cache of 13 PC's & laptops and boot time has not failed to run on one of them.

But as i said in a previous post we are working on why it might not work. What error/behavior do you get?