Which Defrag program should I believe ...

[gogoblender 3,070]

The one that came with Vista?

 

 

Or... the sweet, free, third part prog called Smart Defrag and which optimizes at the same time in a fraction of the time that Microsoft does it in?

 

 

 

 

 

Get lost Microsoft

 

 

gogo

[locolagarto 15]

Darn you must be bored. I need to start another dryad in Cosed net, if your up for giving me some help

I'll be on. Server is holosburgers.

[gogoblender 3,070]

heheh, cooooooooooming

 

 

gogo

[Chareos Rantras 0]

Any idea if the Smart Defrag program can "get rid" of MFT fragments? It's something weird you get after defragging for the X th time.

 

 

If it's really that fast I'll probably use that one =)

 

 

cheers!

Chareos Rantras

[gogoblender 3,070]

It was super fast, and very free. I'll run it again tonight when I get home with some stats... a few things I don't get... like when we get de fragged...how much percentage of disk is supposed to be left unfragged?

 

 

gogo

[locolagarto 15]

I've run diskeeper for a long time. recently uninstalled to try to speed up my drive access for Sacred2. Diskkeeper it has a real time defrag that keeps you from getting defraged. and defrags the MFT. not free though.

[wintermane 0]

Its simple realy. You note the vista tool recommends you have it defrag on a schedual. If you dont do this and instead are manualy doing a defrag its only going to suggest its needed if its REALY needed. Otherwise it will just do one every time its supposed to no matter how little help that actualy is.

[gogoblender 3,070]

Chareos, what is .mft fragments...or anyone else have this info?

 

Thanks!

 

 

gogo

[Yarasa 0]

MFT = Master File table

Most defrag programs wont touch this files and they stay exactly where they are (even if they are middle of everything). Good to be able to move it at least once to keep them together (they are usually created all one section but ..).

[locolagarto 15]

Best to set the schedule to do a defrag on a regular basis , even if not totally neccesary. but have it do it while you are not on, like while at work or sleeping. in the old days( pre windows) defrag was a touchy process. some even suggested always doing a back up first becasue there was a chance of corrupting the data that was being rearranged on the drive. don't think that is a worry anymore.

[wintermane 0]

Wont matter much longer anyway as ssd's dont need it and are quickly engulfing old tech drives.

[stubbie 21]

Different Defrag programs will always give different results.

In all honesty the whole defrag thing is overrated.

 

For the general user (including gamers) a defrag once a month is fine.

 

If you are installing and uninstalling programs or games every day then once a week might be justified.

 

Don't forget that defragging in itself contributes to the wear and tear on your hard drive

[locolagarto 15]

Different Defrag programs will always give different results.

In all honesty the whole defrag thing is overrated.

 

For the general user (including gamers) a defrag once a month is fine.

 

If you are installing and uninstalling programs or games every day then once a week might be justified.

 

Don't forget that defragging in itself contributes to the wear and tear on your hard drive

 

 

Agreed. It's definitely a hardware intense event if the defrag actually needs to do some tuning to the files.

[moo_moo45 0]

What does a defrag program do? Ive never done it before shoudl I start doing it to my computer?

[wintermane 0]

To understand defragging think of your hard drive as a cluttered mess that gets more and more messy as time goes on. Defragging just goes through that mess and puts things back together so for instance your term paper isnt 35 differeent wads of paper stuck under some pizza boxes and instead is one term paper again.

 

But then as soon as you do it most programs are slobby little so and sos and start messing it all up again as fast as inhumanly possible.

 

So basicaly your hard drive is like the floor of a frat house filled with stoners.

[locolagarto 15]

The added benefits is (other than feeling better that stuff is organized again. files are together on the drive and then easier and faster to read when you need them. This performance boost is hardly noticeable with most users. a severely neglected drive on a conmp that does tons of reading, writing , deleting. such as databases, graphics editing stuff that really hard drive intense would probably get the most benefit.

 

Us everyday users would probably never really need to worry about it. I just like knowing my drive is clean and organized

 

There could also be a free space benefit on a nearly full drive. as small fragments take up a whole cluster even if they don't need to. defraging puts familiar fragments toghether together an frees up clusters.

 

I like the frat house stoner analogy better.

[chattius 2,526]

I think OO-Defrag can do MFT and other elsewhere blocked files.

There are free defrag for single files and write protected files at sysinternals: PageDefrag

 

But they are 32bit. Don't know if they plan to update their programs.

Edited November 16, 2009 by chattius

[candesco 0]

What does a defrag program do? Ive never done it before shoudl I start doing it to my computer?

 

See windows as a bookcase. When you start to take the books of out the bookcase and place them somewhere else then before the case got messed up. So you have to reorder the books.

That's actually what a defrag program does; it reorder the files and makes Windows faster.

Well, you probably shoud doing it. But don't take the standard windows defrag, but take something like Defraggler.

[gogoblender 3,070]

I like the frat house stoner analogy better.

 

lol I laughed at that too

 

 

gogo

[User0001 1]

There could also be a free space benefit on a nearly full drive. as small fragments take up a whole cluster even if they don't need to. defraging puts familiar fragments toghether together an frees up clusters.

This isn't true IMHO, can anyone check that please?

Clusters are either available (not in use), or occupied by one file. Defragmenters will move files together, usually in two ways:

-if the file isn't stored in N successive clusters, look for at least N successive free clusters and move it there,

-always use the first N-cluster sequence possible, so that there are as few gaps between files as possible.

-Fragments are considered "familiar" if they belong to the same file.

There has been some debate on sacred-game.com recently: the thread was titled "Need help with performance", and the users Schot, Bondbug and colif were in there IIRC.

 

Regarding the wear caused by defragmenters, it is probably better to defragment once or twice per year than no defragmentation at all, since each boot-up will add to the wear if the data are scattered all over the HDD, rather than closely together. Moving a lot of data once is going to save a lot of access cycles in the long run IMO, and if you defrag after everything is installed, you don't have to worry if the drive fails: get a free replacement drive and reinstall. Later, you would have to worry about buying another, and last but not least your data (letters, excel sheets, photos, mp3, etc). The same goes if the defragger messes up the data structures.

Anything wrong? Feel free to correct me. I don't want to harm anyone's HDD.

[Bondbug 32]

@Loco - I see you mention Diskeeper. I have the new version of this.

 

a) How do you know it is doing it's job?

b) In view of what is said about wear & tear on HD is this a good option

 

When I had ME installed I used to defrag every now and then using the built in system, and the visuals were so hypnotic I lost hours watching the thing.

[chattius 2,526]

Fragmentation and how I explain it to my kids:

Have you ever played paper chase? On each paper is a hint where to find the next paper. And your goal is to find the last paper as quick as possible.

Files are splitted in pieces on a harddisc. Each piece ends with a pointer to the next piece which can be anywhere on the harddisc.

Defragmenting a paperchase would mean laying all the paper in a proper order on a street, so you just can pick them up.

Defragmenting a harddisc is same: all the piece of a file are in correct order, so there is no time lost seeking for the next (moving the reading head).

 

We now use OO-Defrag 12 in a bundle with other software from OO-Software here at work on the single microsoft machine. The bundle costed 70 Euro. But you can download a 30 days test version of 00-defrag for free. OO-Defrag can defragment MFT at reboot. It can defragment in screen safe modus, in background ,....

 

http://www.oo-software.com/home/en/

Edited April 29, 2010 by chattius