What's your opinion of Vista's disk defragmenter?

I just got an involuntary upgrade to Vista Home Premium, and I don't like the new Windows defragger.

The graphics that gave you some idea of how the process was going has been eliminated.

Apparently by design the app takes forever to run - literally hours for the first run with a new system. Just incredible. I used to run the defragger in XP weekly or so, and I don't think it took more than 5 minutes ever. Granted that Vista is a much larger OS - I started off with well over 100K files in total.

Is it still a Diskeeper application?

What are the options for defraggers for Vista?

 

I'm currently using PerfectDisk. It's quite good with both Vista and XP. Frankly, I don't like Windows' defragmenter cus it's slower than the third-party programs.

 

I have been using Vista's Defragger since I ran across this:

Don't judge a book by it's cover

I have mine set to automatically defrag every week and I don't even think about it anymore.

 

Im currently trying out PerfectDisk and many of the defraggers for XP (like O&O Defrag, UltimateDefrag etc) should also work on Vista.

 

well if diskeeper and perfectdisk work on vista as well as they do on xp then try them both and buy the one you like.
lodore

 

From what I understand of the defragger in XP, it cannot defrag running applications, so when I would run it I would shut down as many applications as I could beforehand.

Now in Vista Microsoft says it runs at a low level so that users can still work while it is running. I would just as soon let it take over the computer and get the defrag done, but MS doesn't want to give me that option.

Spy Sweeper in its later versions has a slider control that lets you adjust how much CPU time you want to devote to its sweep function. I like that.

 

I dont think the vista defrag tool is diskeeper's. I think it was rewritten by Microsoft for vista. There are many third party options for vista defrag. I personally like Diskeeper because it's fast if you use manual defrag method, and even better, it has the automatic defrag option. Just turn it on and leave it alone...it does the rest without slowing down running apps either. YPMV.

 

I should add that on my Dell there is a factory installed partition of the hard drive. The d: partition is some sort of primary restore function that rolls back the computer to the moment it was shipped from the Dell factory. Unlike the Windows System Restore, there is only one fixed restore point.

From what I have read on Wilders about defraggers, some of them can foul up the partitions very badly. Hopefully this won't happen here, as I might have to roll my system back at some point. I had two hard drive crashes on the previous Dell; the current machine is a system exchange offered by them because tech support could not get the first machine working, even with a new hard drive, and then a new motherboard and memory cards.

 

I don't much like the vista defrag. So I use this free one that is listed on the Microsoft web pages. see screen shot. it works very well and it is fast. can be downloaded here http://www.auslogics.com/disk-defrag/

 

Always replace mediocre MS Applications with professional third-party-applications, including XP/Vista's Disk defragmenter.

 

There's some sound advice.

It makes me think of Windows Defender, which in every test I have seen seems to be quite mediocre, but back when it was Giant AS, it was regarded as one of the better AS apps.