T60/XP Pro - Diskeeper bugs me daily

[Muse]

It used to happen frequently that Diskeeper would pop up and tell me my HD's performance is degraded due to fragmentation. It wanted me to analyze the disk and defragment. It stopped doing that as much. It was happening only rarely although the disk (60GB) was even fuller, around 80-85%, perhaps.

A couple of weeks ago I installed a 320GB drive in the optical drive slot with a caddy and moved pretty much all my data from the main HD to the 320GB drive, leaving the main HD almost 50% free space. Diskeeper now reports the main HD has 48% free space. I defragmented the main HD several times to achieve "1.00" average fragments/file, nice. However, now Diskeeper is bugging me on the average of once a day or two to analyze/defragment again. I do not want to pay them for the professional version just because they built a nag into the free version.

What to do here?

[taichi]

Upgrade to Windows 7 (or Vista SP2). Your need for third party defragmenters will end, as these OSes have decent, built-in defragmentation that can be set to automatic, or run manually.

[Muse]

Actually, I like Windows XP, and the machine has a license for it. My Windows 7 T61 is by comparison rather difficult in many respects. I don't want to buy and install another OS on this machine if I can help it.

[RealBlackStuff]

Uninstall Diskeeper and use this free Auslogics program instead:
http://www.auslogics.com/en/software/di ... /download/

[Muse]

Uninstall Diskeeper and use this free Auslogics program instead:
http://www.auslogics.com/en/software/di ... /download/

OK, so I went to this link and downloaded what I think you are referring to, which is boost-speed-setup.exe. I then uninstalled Diskeeper Lite, rebooted and installed the download and ran it. It wanted to scan the computer and I let it do so. I came back and it said there were several thousand problems and when I pressed the Fix Problems button it says I have to buy the software, otherwise it will only fix 15 unspecified errors. It offered me a 20% discount and I declined. It was very insistent, trying to make me think I was passing up a "one time offer," and I'd be SOL if I didn't. I still declined.

Isn't there a better solution? I thought this was free. I could swear the site said it was free!

Edit: Ah, I guess I was suckered into downloading the wrong file, didn't pay close enough attention. I'm now downloading just the hopefully free defrag program.

[ac12]

Here is another one you can try.
http://www.mydefrag.com/index.html
It is the upgrade to JkDefrag.

I used JkDefrag before, but forgot all about it.
I'm trying MyDefrag now on an old XP laptop.

[Muse]

Here is another one you can try.
http://www.mydefrag.com/index.html
It is the upgrade to JkDefrag.

I used JkDefrag before, but forgot all about it.
I'm trying MyDefrag now on an old XP laptop.

How did that work out?

I finally did download, install and run Auslogic defrag. It's not as pretty as Diskeeper, but so far no obvious problems. I didn't look deeply into it, whether it monitors the system or not, is configurable on that score or not. I have two HDs in that laptop, one in the optical drive bay. I selected the main HD, because that's the one Diskeeper was bugging me about, seemingly every few minutes! Auslogic defrag instead of just analyzing and defragging the C drive, did both drives, which was quizzical. Anyway, it was quick about it and finally reported zero fragmentation on both drives.

[ac12]

Well MyDefrag installed fine on my XP laptop.
The first FULL defrag (system monthly) took a long time. By the progress I saw, I figured it was going to take a long time, so I gave up watching and went to sleep.

Did it make a difference?
I dunno. Does not seem all that different. But I did not put a stop watch to the before and after, so I cannot really say. But I had defraged it using Auslogic a week prior.

Auslogic has 2 defrag modes; defrag and "defrag and optimize."
The defrag and optimize is access by using the drop down menu.
You can select which drive to defrag.

I partition my drive into a system and data partitions. It is always the system partition (drive c:) that gets fragmented. The data partition has very little fragmentation.

[Muse]

I'm wondering if you would get less fragmentation on your system partition if you moved some OS specific stuff to the data drive, such as temporary directory (C:\Windows\Temp), paging file, maybe the hibernate file, if that's possible.

I have the same 2 partition system on the laptop I'm using right now, a Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit T61. I haven't been using it a very long time. I believe that Windows 7 has its own defragmentation system. At least it doesn't bug me. Diskeeper Lite was an unbelievable PITA. Sometimes it didn't bother me at all. It was utterly inexplicable from my viewpoint.

[ac12]

whoops
Sorry, my desktop and 2 laptops with large drives are partitioned, 2 other laptops with smaller drives are not partitioned.

The page file is not an issue, as once created it essentially does not get fragmented. Plus with only a single drive, I read that it should be kept close to the system files to minimize head movement.

What gets fragmented are the files that are changed. It would be nice if a defrag program would group some of these together, and leave a block of free space so as these are changed, the new fragments can be located close by, again to minimize head movement.