What's wrong with Window's native defrag?

I see a lot of threads discussing defrag software. I used to use O&O defrag (fine piece of software), but soon realized that I was fine with Vista's native defrag utility. O&O did offer different types of defrag (Space, Stealth etc) as well as 'jobs' that I could set up to be run. Other than that, Vista's seems fine for me.
If anyone has a non-windows preference, can you tell me why you are using it? (i.e. what features are included that you find essential?)

 

From my perspective, I don't really know if the Windows defrag is inadequate because it just doesn't give me enough information. Maybe it is great....maybe not. Also, I have a total of eight disks attached to one computer. When the native defragger starts up, it analyzes all 8 disks before it will even let me select anything. That takes quite a while. Then, it just reports "Defrag not needed" most pof the time.

I use PerfectDisk. It lets me analyze what I want and force a defrg whenever I want. Mainly, i was just interested in knowing what it was doing.

Frankly, the aftermarket defraggers are probably not worth the money. But it is interesting to know what is going on.

I have another PC that does not have an aftermarket defrag and only one disk, and I have the Windows defrag set to run every day at 3:00 AM. That one also seems to run smoothly. But most of the time it just reports that "A defrag was not needed".

 

PerfectDisk, and likely the other defrag software companies have articles describing the advantages.

I too use Perfect disk, it does make a difference.

 

I would agree. The aftermarket defraggers do make a difference. I use DefragExpress and boy does it make a difference when compared to the Win XP native defragger!

 

Remember: Defrag ONLY in Safe Mode.

I use IObit Smart Defrag v1.03 from Advanced SystemCare v3.2.0 PRO. Only PRO version have OPTIMIZE function!

I click: Defrag & OPTIMIZE ( here is the difference; files Frequently Used - at the beginning of HDD! ). Improve the efficiency of the whole disk.

Disk Size: 41.61 GB. Total Files and Dirs: 30980.

Fragmentation before: 0.71% ; Fragmented File Count: 556. I see very red everywhere!

Elapsed Time: 00:20:47.

Defrager File Count: 556. I see very blue, nothing red ...

Fragmentation after: 0.00%.

Yeah! OPTIMIZED. Here is the difference.

 

I like the visibility, flexibility, and control the aftermarket products provide.

I picked up PerfectDisk 2008. The only issue I have with it is that it is expensive, a new version comes out (seems like every year), and the upgrade price break for being a current user is almost an insult.

 

Thanks for all the good responses.

 

I still use PD 8 on my Win 2000 system, but I purchased a PerfectDisk 2008 Professional 3-License Power Pack v8 to v2008 Upgrade for $34.99 last May.

 

Just got to think about something. I have a server PC with about six drives (a few internal, a few external) and I noticed windows defrag is set to run on them all at the same time every week. Would be it be best to cascade them (1am, 2am, 3am, etc) or is running defrag on all those drives at the same time ok?

 

Running weekly defrags may be overkill, depends on how you use your system.

PD has tools that allow to to monitor fragmentation.

Running defrag concurrenly on more than 1 drive is just a performance issue.

FYI.

ALL defrag progs, be they MSFT or 3rd parties, use the same built-in Defrag API provided by MSFT.

The only differences among the programs are:

1. The GUI.
2. Options/Tools offered.
3. How they chose to layout the defragged files, affects bothe effectiveness of th edefrag and the speed of execution. But they all call the same MSFT provided Defrag API functions.

 

Windows XP Home Edition, one harddrive.

Windows' own defrag 'thingy' has always worked fine for me, I really don't need another tool.

Perhaps things are different if you have more harddrives or other things that make a difference.

But I really don't think that the average user (I have no experience with Vista) needs a third-party defragger.

 

I used windows builtin one and to be honest never felt any signifiacnt difference after defrag. IMO defragging doesn,t make any significant difference in practice but it,s a good way for software companies to earn.

 

I certainly agree with that (since NTFS). However, back in the days when I was using the FAT file-system, as in Win 95-98, defragging made a very noticeable improvement!

 

I don't know from experience if 'defragging' a seriously fragmented drive will improve speed, but it should make it easier to recover data/files if something goes seriously wrong (Corrupted OS, damaged FAT or NTFS table (if there is such a thing)).

 

One has to understand what defragging does, and the importance of the layout chosen by the defrag program.

A proper defrag will make a difference.
Read the articles at the
and that of their competitors.

 

One has to understand what defragging does, and the importance of the layout chosen by the defrag program.

A proper defrag will make a difference.
Read the articles at the PerfectDisk
and that of their competitors.

 

Defragging affects speed of access.

 

I don't see anything wrong. I have machines installed in 2005, once, running like the day they were installed. Boot time is 12 seconds. I defrag all the partitions once a month using the built in defragmentation utility.

The one thing that does seems to make a difference is the partitioning, lots of small partitions seems to does the trick. Less fragmentation, less seek, better performance.

Mrk

 

Windows defrag (I use XP BTW) is okay for basic conditions, nothing wrong with it.

On the other hand, I have 5 drives currently (500GB or higher) and a few of them see a lot of file traffic that tends to cause fragmentation. With the XP defragger, it would be slow and need scheduling for individual drives. I use Diskeeper '09 Pro on automatic mode to deal with it. Works fine, I can also use the system when defrag is running, and I don't have to worry about overseeing each drive individually.

 

I agree Windows own defrag in Vista gives even less info than the one in XP, and it's painfully slow analyzing and defragging. I got UltimateDefrag 2008 for speed, the graphical interface but specifically for the consolidate feature (among many other possibilities) which allows the virtual volume of Shadow Defender to start with 0 MB (using free defrags or Windows own, SD virtual volume starts with 1,3 GB instead).

To be honest, I'm not totally satisfied with UltimateDefrag 2008 although they are minor things.

 

As someone else pointed out, defragging imrpoves the chances of recovering a mistakenly deleted file. There are other, performance-related advantages to defragging, even under NTFS. Some of these relate to placement, but possibly the most significant factor is that AV scanning of a file is considerably slower when it is fragmented. So, even the simple defraggers like Defrag-A-File or Defraggler - or even contig - produce a performance benefit. Personally, I wouldn't care to use software that defrags in the background. I use Vopt (possibly the defragger with the longest pedigree) for full defrags, and simple file defraggers for daily untangling.

EDIT: It occurs to me to point out another benefit of defragging. This one applies especially to partitions on which are stored many very large files, such as disk images. It takes a long time to defrag huge files, but there is a downside to allowing them to remain in a fragmented state. For a partition used to stash such large files, fragmentation tends to increase dramatically over time. As disorder increases, so does the size of available chunks decrease, so that fragmentation feeds on itself. The increasing fragmentation also has a cost in terms of metadata the file system must retain to represent the structure of the disk. This scattered metadata further aggravates the fragmentation until the partition becomes a real jumble.

 

If I remember correctly, in UtimateDefrag's help file they said that partitions aren't good for defrags because then files in the other partitions aren't placed in the outer rim of the disk, so the disk access is slower.

 

I use PD 2008 Pro and PD for VMWare, plus Server for SBS2003 and Server 2008 and for Exchange server at work and I do notice a difference after defrag, but also I can do a boot time defrag.

Exchange, from the help file...

PD handles this very well automatically stopping services and restarting them after compacting.

With VMs fragmentation can impact performance by slowing I/O speed.

 

I use the opensource JKDefrag, there are both x86 and x64 versions of it. I love the defrag and optimize option. Fast and powerful.