WINDOWS 7 Defragmenter

Discussion in 'backup, imaging & disk mgmt' started by twl845, Nov 1, 2011.

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  1. twl845

    twl845 Registered Member

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    Does WIN7 64x defragmenter do an adequate job compared to 3rd party defragmenters such as Disckeeper or PerfectDisk? I don't mean that as in bells and whistles, but rather doing the job of defragging. Does anyone here use the default defragmenter? Thanks for any response from your experience. :)
     
  2. 1chaoticadult

    1chaoticadult Registered Member

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    Actually in my testing, most 3rd party defragmenters have made my startup boot slower than when I used windows 7 defragmenter. PerfectDisk is the only one I've seen slight improvement over windows 7 defrag.
     
  3. TairikuOkami

    TairikuOkami Registered Member

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    Well the inbuilt does it job quite well, but it takes ages and 3rd party allows more customization and provides much more info than just percentage to completion. :rolleyes:
     
  4. xxJackxx

    xxJackxx Registered Member

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    I've honestly not seen 3rd party defraggers make a difference since Vista came out. I definitely wouldn't spend money on one.
     
  5. wat0114

    wat0114 Guest

    I agree. I tried PerfectDisk for a while and it was fine, but I also noticed no difference between it and the inbuilt defragger in Win7 I'm currently using. BTW, it has no fancy options, but the inbuilt one can be set on a schedule.
     
  6. twl845

    twl845 Registered Member

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    Thanks for your opinions so far. The reason I asked my question was because I have been using PerfectDisk for quite a long time and it's version 12 has become a little too much IMO. It has too many bells and whistles for me that I don't need. My HD takes for ever to fragment. After my last defrag last june, it was 1.4% last week. That's why I thought I would uninstall PD saving the .exe in case I want it back, and give the WIN7 defragger a run for six months or so. Are there any long time users of the WIN7 defragger with some comments? Thanks again for your input. :)
     
  7. 1chaoticadult

    1chaoticadult Registered Member

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    I have mines on a schedule and I never have to worry about defragmentation because win7 defrag already takes care of it while I'm sleep. ;)
     
  8. Spruce

    Spruce Registered Member

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    I prefer Diskeeper right now, if only because it's the best automatic solution.
    You never have to think about defragging anymore, works quick and effective in the background.

    I guess Windows 7 Defragmenter is enough if you're fine with running defrag manually or by setting up schedule.
     
  9. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    wat0114,

    Probably because neither contributed to a performance improvement. Sorry, we have been cynical about defraggers in other threads too.
     
  10. napoleon1815

    napoleon1815 Registered Member

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    Brian K.,

    I am questioning them more and more now as well. I can't say I've ever seen a defragger do much to my disks, outside of adding wear and tear on the disk.
     
  11. elapsed

    elapsed Registered Member

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    Win7 defragmenter works fine for me.
     
  12. moontan

    moontan Registered Member

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    the W7 defragger does not defrag locked system files.
    i use Puran Defrag to defrag those at boot times.

    but to tell the truth, i don't know if that is important or even necessary.
     
  13. axial

    axial Registered Member

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    In a refreshing change of pace, the Win7 defragger is smart enough to respect the "no defrag" flag for SSDs.
     
  14. elapsed

    elapsed Registered Member

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    Could you elaborate on this? What do you mean by "respect"? The Windows feature that simply disables scheduled defrag, or something else?

    Is the "no defrag" flag something the firmware on the SSD's specify, and how do you know if an SSD specifies it or not?
     
  15. axial

    axial Registered Member

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    SSDs (possibly this is only on Win7, not sure) use a feature called "TRIM" or "garbage collection" that is similar to defrag. AFAIK TRIM only runs when there is no user logged in, so I'm not sure if it can be scheduled.

    I was pleasantly surprised to find that the defrag dialog on Win7, when it had been installed as a clean install on the SSD (i.e. not cloned from a HDD or image), has a way to display which drives it thinks can be defragged, and the SSD is not listed. I believe I also found a registry entry that clearly shows the SSD as not being "defrag-able".

    I believe the settings were added by Windows, when it recognized the hardware ID of the drive during Win7 install, although I don't know for sure. I suppose it could also be something that's checked or added by firmware updates for the SSDs, but I doubt it. In the case of the Mushkin drives, they use SandForce controllers. There have been 3 firmware updates for the drive in the past 2 months or so; any drive mfg using SandForce controllers would have had similar updates.

    I'll check the SSD system to see if I can get you a screenshot of the info if you'd like.
     
  16. Hungry Man

    Hungry Man Registered Member

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    When you install Windows 7 to an SSD it makes a few changes I believe to Superfetch as well as the defragger. Defragger will not run on the SSD.

    TRIM and Garbage Control aren't quite like defragging. Garbage Control kinda gives it away - it says "Do I still need to store this?" and if not it gets deleted.

    SSD's don't need to be defragged because they aren't disks with little spots of data splattered around.
     
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