Is a third party disk defrag utility recommended?

[Adam A.]

I have upgraded my T42 hard drive to a 60GB Hitachi Travelstar 7200RPM running Windows XP SP2.

1. Is it necessary to purchase and use a third party disk defragmenter software such Diskeeper 9 or Perfectdisk 7 to keep the hard drive running at optimal performance or is the built in defrag tool in Windows XP more than sufficient for this purpose?

2. Is there a significant difference in disk performance when these third party utilities are used?

3. If a third party disk defragmenter is recommended, which one should I purchase?

Would really appreciate everyone's input

Thanks in advance for your help

Adam

[jdhurst]

There is not a necessity. However, Perfect Disk can be scheduled to run silently and automatically at whatever period you pick. I run Perfect Disk daily at midnight on my Desktop and daily at noon on my T41. ... JDH

[egibbs]

I use Diskeeper and like it.

If you are religious about running the built in defragger that is probably sufficient, But most people forget or get lazy after a while. There are a few files it won't defrag, but I don't think they'll make a big difference. The main advantage of the 3rd party tools is the ability to easily schedule them to run in the background or at night.

Ed Gibbs

[farna]

I run the XP defragger occasionally on my HP Omnibook 6000 and have never had a problem. It can be scheduled also. I'm preparing a TP 600E to give away running Win98SE. I ran into a problem where the built in defrag was taking forever to go through a 6GB drive, and then it wasn't really doing the job. It would go so far then restart, get a little further, etc. An hour later it reported finished, but I think it just gave up. Computer was abysymally slow even after defragging 2-3 times. I even wiped the drive and reinstalled everything, defragging right after OS install and after installing each piece of software. Same problem. I downloaded the trial version of Diskeeper and it fixed the problem! First defrag took about 40 minutes, but no restarts, and the computer is actually quite zippy now! Since I'm giving this thing to a computer newbie, I bought the home version of Diskeeper for $19.95 at the site and have it set to defrag whenever needed automatically. If I run the util manually it takes about 15 minutes to defrag. Wouldn't have found out about it except for the people on this site! If you have a similar problem where MS defrag seems to continuously loop Diskeeper or another third party util will likely fix it. Otherwise the built in defrag should be sufficient.

[selvan777]

It's not necessary but the 3rd party utilities you mentioned are friendlier to use. XP's native defragger is sufficient and can be scheduled using Scheduled Tasks but because it's best to run the defrag session in Safe mode, I don't believe you can take advantage of running the Scheduled Task, it's disabled in Safe mode.

There is definitely a boost in disk performance after defragging using any defragger.

Which one to use is a personal pref, either of the two you mentioned is a good choice.

BTW, using a 3rd party defrag utility will not fix any problem with XP's native defragger, you merely will not be using it.

Aside from the lack of options and features with XP's native defragger, the biggest complaint is the constant restarting of the defrag session. It's not really a problem but rather the nature of the beast. Every time disk writes occur the defragger will stop, re-look, and start again or even abort. And as long as Windows is running in Normal mode, disk writes will continuously take place. This is why it's best to run XP's native defragger in Safe mode.

[farna]

Darn! I probably could have gotthe Win98SE defragger to work just fine if I'd restarted in Safe Mode! I didn't think about that... should have! Well, Disk Keeper is a better solution to my particular problem anyway. Now to write a mini "users manual" for the 600E!

[greg0815]

At least in Europe some people replace the built in defragger (which is a slim version of diskeeper) cause of the companies relation to Scientology. So they avoid the full version also. A good alternative might be OO Defrag.

But:
As long as you do not host any server tasks or have abnormally high disc activity on your HDD, IMHO defragging every 3-6 months should be ok.