What's wrong with Window's native defrag?

Discussion in 'backup, imaging & disk mgmt' started by Fontaine, Apr 19, 2009.

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  1. aigle

    aigle Registered Member

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    I don,t say Defrag doesn,t make any difference. I just say I don,t feel any noticeable difference after defrag in my day to day use of computer. When i don,t feel, i can,t say that it makes a great difference.
     
  2. accessalternative

    accessalternative Registered Member

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    I felt the same way during all those years I only had tried MS's built-in defrag utility [and in fact, I just couldn't imagine any necessity to defrag since I thought it to be so ineffective], but now I just can't do without a once a week defrag with JKDefrag. Not to mention that it being opensource, there's no way these guys are trying to get any bucks out of me ;)
     
    Last edited: Apr 20, 2009
  3. Raza0007

    Raza0007 Registered Member

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    One major difference between 3rd party defraggers and Microsoft's built in defrag is that 3rd party defraggers work even if the free space on the partition is less than 1%. Microsoft defrag requires something around 15% free space (I think) and will not work if free space is lower than this figure. This was a deciding factor for me as my partitions normally have around 5-10% free space available at any given moment.

    I use PerfectDisk 10 by the way.
     
  4. lodore

    lodore Registered Member

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    I also use jkdefrag.
    my parents machine runs diskeeper 2007.
    when i got my computer i couldnt afford defrag software so i decided to use jkdefrag.
    I create shortcuts and add different commandline parameters depending on where i want to defrag for example C: or f: or both and what options.
    very flexible and nothing needs to be installed.
     
  5. accessalternative

    accessalternative Registered Member

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    There's also a portable version of JKDefrag, located here.

    Cheers
     
  6. TechGyrl

    TechGyrl Registered Member

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    I currently use Diskeeper 2009, and find that it works much better than the Windows native defrag. The Automatic Defrag feature is great since there is no user input. It also has a I-FAAST feature, which increases file access time. I think it is a great product to try.
     
  7. Masterton

    Masterton Registered Member

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    I use PerfectDisk. The reason is its defrag capability is superior.
    About 1 year ago I used PerfectDisk to help someone to defrrag a somehow heavily fragmented partition and the patition got no fragment but ~2-3 upon completion. I was surprised and somehow I wonder if it's lying. I used another defrag program to double check he result and it's true. Impressive.

    I also tried DiskKeeper but there are still quite some numbers of fragments after several runs.

    No saying for Windows default. It has the worst result.
     
  8. Masterton

    Masterton Registered Member

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    Yes you are right in some extent. Don't be addicted in defragging often. It's unnecessary and may degrade your HDD faster. I would wait until the HDD is moderately fragmented before defrag, and it's about one-two month(s). Also separate data and windows/program files into different partitions.
     
  9. mistycat

    mistycat Registered Member

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    Kind of OT but here is a free previous version of Ultimate Defrag (think the link still work's) http://download.cnet.com/UltimateDefrag-Freeware-Edition/3000-2094_4-10582157.html (support's Vista)There is a thread around here on it, farther back than I thought: https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=152907 started year's ago, just not as pretty as the latest version but nice to see what's going on and very fast on only fragmented file's. Window's defragmenter is fine but just doesn't show enough info from what I remember, only used it a couple of time's.
     
  10. I don't bother with defragging. It's time-consuming and I've never seen it make a difference on new machines. Maybe on old ones, with slow hard drives, low RAM, and tiny hard drive buffers... But it just seems to me that NTFS never gets really horribly fragmented.

    Granted, on any filesystem you'll get some fragmentation, and it's worse for some filesystems than others. But on the desktop I don't think it's a real issue.
     
  11. mistycat

    mistycat Registered Member

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    If you want to see quite a bit of fragmentation on an NTFS system, try having 2-3 converted avi on your system. I've seen mine over 60% fragmented with only three encoded video. Even the avi can be fairly fragmented, granted, it is confined to only those file's but some keep them on their computer.
     
  12. the Tester

    the Tester Registered Member

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    I don't see anything wrong with Windows native defrag on XP Home.
    On the rare occasions that I do need to defrag, it works fine.
     
  13. Masterton

    Masterton Registered Member

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    Well you are right in some extents but you don't need sit at the computer to do defragging.
    Schedule and run it before you sleep. Set that computer shuts down or hibernate upon completion.
    Defrag 1 time every three months. It doesn't hurt either.

    Defragging helps to keep your hard drive live longer as long as you don't over-defragging. It's because your hard drive will have to spin here and there to read/write if your data and free space are scattered and fragmented.

    Also it helps a bit in Windows stability.
     
  14. DOSawaits

    DOSawaits Registered Member

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    Still, most of the defragger aren't so smart to understand the meaning of a GOOD defrag, especially the most used (commercial ones) named here.

    A smart defragger will leave quite some free space at the very beginning of the partition, which none of those praised defraggers do, they place everything at the beginning, resulting in all newly created files (think about browser cache files, regularly modified temp files, altered other files) being places somewhere extremely far away from the inner circle, meaning more tear&wear for the HD.

    At least, MyDefrag beta (follow up of JKDefrag) is smart enough to understand this very important feature in defragging.
     
    Last edited: Jul 10, 2009
  15. Masterton

    Masterton Registered Member

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    One thing I dislike Diskkeeper is their auto defrag feature. I think it's cleary within the case of overkilling. A low level of defragmentation is perfectly fine and you won't gain any much performance from it. Keeping defragging day-after-day is overkilling and many be harmful to HDD (defrag requires additonal reads/writes).

    Diskkeeper is weak as a manual defrag when comparing to PerfectDisk.
     
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