Defragment software - which one??

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SimonCC · #1 Post by **SimonCC** » Fri Nov 19, 2004 2:13 pm

I am aware there have been posts on this already but they are all refer to disk defrag software that run in the background. I want simple reliable, 'scan on demand' defrag software that also gets into the MFT file.
Any recommendations would be much appreciated, im aware of diskkeeper and might get it but i dont know if it fixes the MFT or if there is an option to use it on demand only (the web page for executive is vague on this)

Thanks!

tranle · #2 Post by **tranle** » Fri Nov 19, 2004 2:24 pm

I usually use the PerfectDisk from raxco.com. I think that they have a trial version.

AssPenny · #3 Post by **AssPenny** » Fri Nov 19, 2004 2:54 pm

I use VoptXP, lots of options and it is very fast.

egibbs · #4 Post by **egibbs** » Fri Nov 19, 2004 4:00 pm

I use Diskeeper (7.0).

Yes you can run it in on demand mode only. Just turn Smart Scheduling off (can be controlled individually for each volume).

And yes it will defrag the MFT, though you may need to set a boot time defrag to do it.

Ed Gibbs

monty cantsin · #5 Post by **monty cantsin** » Fri Nov 19, 2004 4:09 pm

SimonCC wrote:Any recommendations would be much appreciated, im aware of diskkeeper and might get it but i dont know if it fixes the MFT or if there is an option to use it on demand only (the web page for executive is vague of this)

Yes, it defrags the MFT. And with any defragmenter that I know of, background defragmentation is just an extra to the "on-demand" features, it's the icing on the cake, so to speak. I don't know of any defragmenter that only works in background mode and doesn't let you do it on-demand. The Home Edition of Diskeeper, for instance, doesn't have the automatic scheduling feature like the Pro Edition. So it's an extra you have to pay for.

I've been using Diskeeper up to V8 for quite a long while now, then I tried O&O Defrag 6.5 because it had superior background defragmentation capabilities at that time, but now I have come back to Diskeeper Professional V9 again. It's a good on-demand defragmenter, and with the new "I/O Smart", it appears to be the best background defragmenter that is currently available.

Most defragmenters (Diskeeper V8 included) only measure CPU load to determine whether they have to slow down in order to let other processes run without serious performance penalties during defragmentation. But whenever any other task needs to access the hard disk, it almost freezes because the defragmenter works heavily on the drive and does not allow concurrent activity. With Diskeeper 9, actual disk I/O activity is measured so that the defragmenter pauses if necessary. Works absolutely fine for me.

Btw, the FragShield feature might just be what you're looking for. It determines the peak usage of your paging file and recommends you to set the minimal size accordingly. This is done, as it has been explained to you in other threads on this forum already, to prevent the kind of fragmentation that occurs when the initial size of the paging file is too small so that it has to be expanded repeatedly. The same is done with the space reserved for a growing MFT, Diskeeper analyzes your usage patterns and recommends changes in order to prevent fragmentation.

Most defragmenters, Diskeeper included, are available as trials. I suggest you download them, test them on your own and choose the one which pleases you most.

SimonCC · #6 Post by **SimonCC** » Fri Nov 19, 2004 4:21 pm

thanx again monty cantsin, im gonna d/l trial first for sure? Do you know if the trial version has full capability, i.e. does it resrict you to only diagnosing a problem but not curing it, as if it does i wont bother!

monty cantsin · #7 Post by **monty cantsin** » Fri Nov 19, 2004 5:05 pm

SimonCC wrote:thanx again monty cantsin, im gonna d/l trial first for sure? Do you know if the trial version has full capability, i.e. does it resrict you to only diagnosing a problem but not curing it, as if it does i wont bother!

The Diskeeper downloads are full-featured, time-limited trials:

http://www.executive.com/downloads/menu.aspx

Be sure to get the Professional Edition if you want to check out the full-featured defragmentation functionality (including automatic scheduling, boot-time defragmentation and FragShield), however. I also suggest you to take a look at O&O Defrag 6.5 so that you can compare:

http://www.oo-software.com/en/download/index.shtml

You can have both packages installed at the same time. But please notice that due to differences in the algorithms, each software might have its own logic in placing the files on the hard drive, so that they kind of "work against" each other when being used alternately. Try one software first for a few days, and then test out the other, otherwise you won't have reliable results that show the performance of each software package in a real-world situation.

kjarrett · #8 Post by **kjarrett** » Sat Nov 20, 2004 7:03 am

In your experience guys, how much do these apps really help?

lfeagan · #9 Post by **lfeagan** » Sat Nov 20, 2004 11:55 am

I have been using Disk Keeper for years and it really does do a great job of speeding up application load times and the reading of large files, particularly if your machine has large files which are frequently changing in size, being deleted, things like that which cause bad fragmentation. It is also good at handling defragmenting system areas which often times cannot be defragmented via the standard Windows defragmenter. This helps a smidge with OS performance. If I remember correctly, Disk Keeper is actually the built-in Windows defragmenter, but it is a highly stripped down version in terms of functionality.

leesiulung · #10 Post by **leesiulung** » Sat Nov 20, 2004 2:20 pm

how about a decent "freeware" defragmentation software. Does that even exist? A quick search turned up nothing...

Leon · #11 Post by **Leon** » Sat Nov 20, 2004 2:41 pm

you already have it!

CChoi83 · #12 Post by **CChoi83** » Sat Nov 20, 2004 11:35 pm

Diskeeper. It's the only way to go.

leesiulung · #13 Post by **leesiulung** » Sun Nov 21, 2004 5:40 am

Leon wrote:you already have it!

I said "decent", the M$ one is not decent.

But you are right, it is free...

lvlolvlo · #14 Post by **lvlolvlo** » Sun Nov 21, 2004 7:11 am

i just use m$ in safe mode. in safe mode it's decent and w/ or w/o it's free

T41mbi · #15 Post by **T41mbi** » Sun Nov 21, 2004 11:52 am

another vote for diskeeper

Elhabash · #16 Post by **Elhabash** » Sun Nov 21, 2004 1:12 pm

I say O&O should do fine, too. I didn't test Diskepper, though.

What I don't like about those programs is the processes running in the background, even when you don't need them. Even more clutter...

Ghostrider · #17 Post by **Ghostrider** » Sun Nov 21, 2004 6:35 pm

Maybe I just had some bad luck but several months ago (last year...) I tested some defrag tools. Also O&O and diskeeper

After I uninstalled them all the usual MS DEFRAG-Button has been grayed out. If I try to run defrag it claims that a file is missing.... OK - the system is already old and I already planned to reinstall for about one year but never had the time to do so... but after testing them all I did not notice any true benefit from defragging my harddrive. Somehow I feel that defragging was more important in the past and showed up much bigger improvements.
Is defragging a MUST: Nope.
Does your system performance benefit from defragging the harddrive: Yes.
Is this performance gain huge: Nope.
Defragging once a day / once a week / once a month: This depends on what you are doing. But more often than "once a week" won't show great improvements and full defragmentations take much more time than they will save.

Maybe it's some kind of "believe". If you believe in the defrag tool you will recognize the improvement every time. If a system that has not been defragmented for a long time but has seen many file changes and data movements etc gets defragmented you'll recognize the difference.

monty cantsin · #18 Post by **monty cantsin** » Sun Nov 21, 2004 8:14 pm

Very well put, Ghostrider. I fully agree with your posting.

#19 Post by **jdhurst** » Sun Nov 21, 2004 8:17 pm

I use Raxco PerfectDisk 6. One of the things I like about it is that I run it daily in silent (automatic) mode at noon each day. Rarely (exceedingly rarely) does it take more than 25 minutes, and I never notice it running anyway. I just use the machine. ... JDHurst

Peter_S · #20 Post by **Peter_S** » Sun Nov 21, 2004 8:24 pm

....the problem occurs when you uninstalled Diskeeper. The vendor of Diskeeper, Executive Software, also provides the default defrag tool for Windows XP. As a result, when Diskeeper is uninstalled from your PC, some of the uninstalled files were also used by the default defrag tool, resulting in a missing file(s) problem.

Executive Software is aware of this issue but hasn't addressed it. This issue was first identified to Executive way back in early 2001!

monty cantsin · #21 Post by **monty cantsin** » Sun Nov 21, 2004 9:56 pm

Peter_S wrote:....the problem occurs when you uninstalled Diskeeper. The vendor of Diskeeper, Executive Software, also provides the default defrag tool for Windows XP. As a result, when Diskeeper is uninstalled from your PC, some of the uninstalled files were also used by the default defrag tool, resulting in a missing file(s) problem.

Executive Software is aware of this issue but hasn't addressed it. This issue was first identified to Executive way back in early 2001!

Interesting, I have been using Diskeeper Professional since version 7 and haven't run into such problems yet. Uninstalling Diskeeper Pro 7 on several systems (Windows XP Pro and 2000) worked flawlessly. Then I switched to Diskeeper Pro 8 and upgraded (without a manual deinstallation of the previous version) to release 9 lately. After reading your posting I've tried to uninstall this version 9, and it didn't give me any problems again. The original defragger that comes with Windows XP shows up and works like it should. So no problems here.

monty cantsin · #22 Post by **monty cantsin** » Sun Nov 21, 2004 10:25 pm

leesiulung wrote:how about a decent "freeware" defragmentation software. Does that even exist? A quick search turned up nothing...

O&O Defrag 2000 Freeware Edition.

http://www.oo-software.com/en/products/ood2000free/

No longer available from O&O Software, but can still be downloaded here:

http://ftp.isu.edu.tw/pub/Yesterday/dis ... nglish.exe

http://linux04.wekanet-team.de/download ... german.exe

Ghostrider · #23 Post by **Ghostrider** » Mon Nov 22, 2004 12:23 pm

Peter_S wrote:....the problem occurs when you uninstalled Diskeeper. The vendor of Diskeeper, Executive Software, also provides the default defrag tool for Windows XP. As a result, when Diskeeper is uninstalled from your PC, some of the uninstalled files were also used by the default defrag tool, resulting in a missing file(s) problem.

Executive Software is aware of this issue but hasn't addressed it. This issue was first identified to Executive way back in early 2001!

Thanks for the information! Well, it left a bad taste... I just wanted to test some defrag tools and destructed a part of my system :-/

leesiulung · #24 Post by **leesiulung** » Mon Nov 22, 2004 6:35 pm

monty cantsin wrote:
leesiulung wrote:how about a decent "freeware" defragmentation software. Does that even exist? A quick search turned up nothing...
O&O Defrag 2000 Freeware Edition.

http://www.oo-software.com/en/products/ood2000free/

No longer available from O&O Software, but can still be downloaded here:

http://ftp.isu.edu.tw/pub/Yesterday/dis ... nglish.exe

http://linux04.wekanet-team.de/download ... german.exe

monty cantsin,

thanks, I will give it a try. Too bad they don't support the freeware edition anymore. But over time it certainly increases my chance of purchasing software that I have been using a freeware version for a while i.e. ZoneAlarm Pro.

SimonCC · #25 Post by **SimonCC** » Mon Nov 22, 2004 6:56 pm

leesilung - please post to let us all know what it is like!

Defragment software - which one??

Defragment software - which one??

Re: Defragment software - which one??

Ghostrider, Re: Windows Defrag Tool Being Grayed Out....

Re: Ghostrider, Re: Windows Defrag Tool Being Grayed Out....

Re: Ghostrider, Re: Windows Defrag Tool Being Grayed Out....

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