Please Recommend A Good Disk Defragmenter - Can you recommend one?

Does anybody know a GOOD disk defragmenter for windows? I need a good house/small office solution (and by that I mean in the Free/cheap area). Does anyone know any???

Well to be honest if you don't know any free/cheap at least a good one, even if it's a little pricey since I have some sensitive data on my PC that I can't afford to lose. And the windows one is so... useless... I mean does anyone remember when in the old days you ran defrag from the DOS command line and all the little squares ACTUALLY got together, now on windows, for reasons that I can't imagine there's always this HUGE gap in the midle of the data... My personal opinion, you defrag with it and everything is basically the same... I can't see any (and I mean ANY) improvement on the performance, not with the disk full, half empty or almost empty, you defrag and it's like wasting an hour of your life.

Either way I used to use Norton's (I think the last time I used it was on 2002), I've thinking on going back to symantec (your that aspect not for NAV) but as I'm already here I thought "What the hell... let me ask"

So either way, thanks for any suggestion that you may have...

 

 

 

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If you want, there is a disk defragmenter that can work in the background as long as you have your computer on. Take a look at DiskKeeper and see if that will do the job for you.

You can have schedules set up telling the program when to do the defrags or just leave it running all the time. Keep in mind that it may slow things down on older systems since it's using resources when it's running.

The good thing about this program is that you don't have to go away from the computer and don't touch it fearing it will restart. DiskKeeper will work in the background doing the defragging while you are still working on other things.

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I have always used the built in Disk Defragmanter comes with Windows operating system. I have never faced any problem in working with it. But if there is any disadvantages using it I would definately like to know about it. Please tell me if anyone know about it.

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I've always just used the Windows default. I never really thought to question why there was always a giant, white gap in the middle of the data/info screen when the thing finished. Hmmm ... now you've made me start wondering if that might be a bad thing!

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well usually there's a big gap because of two reasons. one, you have enormous files that can't fit. like i have pgp virtual disks that are 4 GB or larger, but windows reads them as a single file, and consequently will stick them far apart from the rest of the data on the drive. the other reason is usually because your pagefile is on the same drive, and windows won't move it. to do a proper scan and defragmentation, you need to disable virtual memory, even though the computer tells you it'll crash, restart it, defrag, and then enable virtual memory again, then restart and it will be in it's proper place (hopefully). but that's an important part because you should defrag your system every month or so, along with the space reserved for the pagefile, so that the computer will run error-free.
the windows default defragmenter works fine, and you can get to the other old-style one from boot. or use perfectdisk which gives you the same graphical interface, and alot more options, but at a price.

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yeah that is the same thing that i do and it works great! and system mechinic has a dish defragmanter that comes with it its great try downloadin the free tryial sometime!

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Defragging tips: You can use the Windows Defragger. I have found it to work really well. THE best way to do it is this: Disable Virtual Memory. Disable Pagefile *WARNING!!*If you have less than 256MB of RAM, do NOT disable the Paging File! It will CRASH! Garunteed!

Run the Defragging program. Once done, turn on the Virtual Memory and Paging file. For less than 1G of ram, paging file should be 1.5x your ram. Eg. I have 512RAM. My PG is 768MB. For 1GRAM and above, set it to the same amount. Eg. 2G RAM = 2G Paging file.

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Other defraggers have more options, like moving all the files to the front fo the drive so that if you use a partitioner that isn't made to do non-destructive partitioning you'd be safe regardless...

As far as performance is concerned, unless your datat is REALLY fargmented, I've never noticed performance drops because of it. And if performance doesn't drop due to it, defragging wont increase performance any. Hard drives can only go a certain speed wether files are congruent or not, and HD's have a tendancy of slowing down the longer you use them. I know my parents comp's old HD went thru a good 5 years of heavy use. It was reportedly the same speed as the one I just put in it... yet the performance dif was insane.

So yea, if you want a huge disk usage performance gain I'd suggest getting some 10K rpm drives Defragging helps but only a little... and if you are accessing lots of small files it'll be even less noticeable since those files wouldn't be that fragmented regardless.

 

 

 

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I just installed Diskeeper Lite about a week or so ago, and one feature i like about it is it just popped up one day and told me the number of files that were fragmented and said that I should defragment my computer. Hey if I can defrag so it will be quick then I'll do it when it says.

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The disk deframent used by windows xp seem to be useless to me. Although it defrags fast, all it does is shifting the files to cover the empty spaces in between. There is frequent big gaps after defragmenting. For me i run my com with 2 OS. I prefer defragmenting on windows 98. It takes a longer time, but at least it does a clean job

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