The best free Disk Defragmenter available?

Saturos

Saturos

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Well, what the title says. What are some some recommendations for a good, free defragmenter utility that doesn't suck like the built-in Windows version?
 
Whats wrong with the windows version and how is another one better?
 
sea said:
Not really. I find PerfectDisk gets me better performance (mostly with regards to boot times), but honestly the different is pretty damn small.
Click to expand...

There are people who agree with you, and people who don't from what I've seen when it comes to jkdefrag. I happen to be on the other side.
 
I'm on Raziaar's side. Fvck you Anti-JKDefrag bitches.
 
I have Diskeeper installed for a background defrag ( can also turn off this feature for manual defrags). Havent had any issues with it.
 
Diskeeper 2008 FTW! Not free, but I like it the best of all defraggers...fast, low resource usage and great features. Easiest to use too.

As for windows XP defragger, it's okay if you don't mind long defrag times and repeated defrag runs. It also lacks the ability to defrag important system files, or multiple drives simultaneously. On any serious system, it's quite painful to use. Vista's is improved slightly, but brings with it, it's own drawbacks like lack of a GUI. Anyway, it's all up to the individual user as to what he/she wants and is willing to pay for.
 
sea said:
The built-in Windows defragmenter places similar files together, but it doesn't do so for maximum efficiency.
Click to expand...
That's right sea. Also, the default defragmenter would suffice for most people, but if you game on your PC, it's most optimal to defrag the sh** out of your HDD to reduce file swapping errors that can cause load stuttering and instability. I've figured this out the hard way first hand while trying to play Oblivion several times a few days ago. When I defragged several times, I was surprised to discover that the crashes had completely stopped, and loading from one area to another was next to seamless.

Since then, I've become more obsessed than ever with proper defragmenting. The blue "contiguous files" bar is like almost completely solid. :E

To answer DEATHMASTER's question, the main problem with the default defragmenter is that it will not defrag system files. This will not do at all for me anymore. I've just got too much crap on my HDD now. Some utilities out there will even defrag active program files. <EDIT: Stonewall beat me to it. Well said though Stonewall. :D

I tried Sysinternal's Page Defrag and Contig utilities, and noticed that even my boot time is significantly improved. Not sure about the one sea suggested I try yet. Sea, is it a large download?
 
I agree with Sea. Perfectdisk is my top choice for defragmenting, although it isn't free.
 
I use Diskeeper.

In the magical land of the internet, everything's free.
 
taviow said:
I'm defragmenting using JkDefrag, it's been defragmenting for around an hour already D:
How long will it take?
Click to expand...

Which defrag are you doing? When I first start using jkdefrag, I defrag with the 7 option. That will sort everything on the drive in a specific order. Then after that, I run a 3 option(it's all on the website what these mean, and it's recommendation is the 7, followed by a 3 from then on)... this time it can take a while(both actually), but every subsequent defrag will be super fast.

Don't be discouraged by long defragmentation times the first go. It's lightning fast when you're doing maintenance defrags and while it doesn't have all that extra shit to do which it did the first time. If you already had your HD defragged with another program, don't be surprised if it doesn't appear all beautifully defragged in JKdefrag, because JKdefrag is far more thorough.
 
Or you could do what I did and shove 2x Samsung 1TB Spinpoints in whatever raid config you require. When you have crazy read/write and burst speeds you don't need to worry about fragmentation. This thread would be more interesting with some HD Tach benchmarks.
 
I downloaded jkdefrag,booted in to safe mode and clicked the jkdefrag.exe as recommended on their site.
The first 2 phases took 2 hours, phase three was only at 0.39% after 2 hours.

I also got perfect disk, but saw it constantly has two background processes running regardless if you use the program or not, which take up 10mb, so I uninstalled it.

My hd is 460 GB, it's a samsung spinpoint T166 SATA, of that 358gb are in use.
 
I tried JkDefrag, and it's just so insanely slow that the performance gain is negligible.
 
In the 2-3 years I've had this computer I've never ran Windows defrag or any other degrag program once. Maybe I should but I'm going to be building a new computer soon anyways. :)
 
Kyorisu said:
Or you could do what I did and shove 2x Samsung 1TB Spinpoints in whatever raid config you require. When you have crazy read/write and burst speeds you don't need to worry about fragmentation. This thread would be more interesting with some HD Tach benchmarks.
Click to expand...
How about I raid your HDD's then? I must have faster loading times. Also though, speeds aren't the only concern. Some games are extremely sensitive to sloppily fragmented HDDs. I can testify Oblivion to this. (and please, spare me the jokes about how I suck for playing Oblivion anyways you Oblivion haters. This thread is not about Oblivion.) So Defragmentation is still a good practice whether the user has a RAID setup or not.

I have a good friend with a pair of 10,000rpm WD raptors configured in RAID, and he says he still defrags from time to time too.
 
Apparently RAID is by no means immune to fragmentation. It's still NTFS and Windows still sees the RAID 0 as a single drive and treats it accordingly. The actual placement of the files is handled by the RAID controller and the final writing is done by the drive controller.

I don't run any RAID config, and don't intend to either for the forseeable future, but my friend does. He too defrags using Diskeeper 2008.

If you are interested, there is a short pdf at the Diskeeper site that my friend pointed me to, which describes RAID and defragging.
http://files.diskeeper.com/pdf/FileFragmentation_SANsNASandRAID.pdf
 
Nemesis6 said:
I tried JkDefrag, and it's just so insanely slow that the performance gain is negligible.
Click to expand...

How about you give it a chance rather than pussying out just because the first scan takes a few hours?

My Jkdefrag defrags now in a minute or less after initial defrag except in the case of after large installations that obviously require in more defrag time.

:-P
 
I'm using JkDefrag on my work laptop, and it's pretty speedy, and it looks like it's doing a good job from the GUI. I'll have to use this at home, it will probably take a million hours.
 
I use the built in windows defrag tool on the rare occasion that I actually have to defrag. I don't see how any other tool could possibly do a better job when all defragmentation works on exactly the same concept. So until I see some evidance that any of these other tools work better than the built in windows defrag utility I'm sticking to it.
 
Raziaar said:
How about you give it a chance rather than pussying out just because the first scan takes a few hours?

My Jkdefrag defrags now in a minute or less after initial defrag except in the case of after large installations that obviously require in more defrag time.

:-P
Click to expand...

That's what confused me... The first time took a long time as I expected, and after that, the defrag times went down marginally, but still not enough to not be deemed a waste of time. Tried perfectdisk, too. Same problem. Diskeeper just seems much faster, I can't really see much purpose in changing to something that keeps being slow to the point that you just don't wanna bother.
 
Nemesis6 said:
That's what confused me... The first time took a long time as I expected, and after that, the defrag times went down marginally, but still not enough to not be deemed a waste of time. Tried perfectdisk, too. Same problem. Diskeeper just seems much faster, I can't really see much purpose in changing to something that keeps being slow to the point that you just don't wanna bother.
Click to expand...

Umm... are you doing the 7 option again, or the 3 option? You want to do the 3 option as maintenance.
 
No Limit said:
I don't see how any other tool could possibly do a better job when all defragmentation works on exactly the same concept.
Click to expand...
Not necessarily. The default Windows defrag tool is a half-assed defragmenter because M$ developed it.
No, not sarcasm. I'd dead serious. :| The only product Microsoft has ever done right was the base XP/NT kernel. (I'm not a M$ anti-fanboy. Really. :upstare:)

That aside, the default defragmenter cannot defrag system files, active files, nor any partition/physical HDDs configured as RAID.

JkDefrag does an excellent job btw Raziaar.
Tried it for myself, and after the initial, long defrag, (a.k.a the all crap the default Windows defragmenter missed) every other time is a breeze.
I cannot believe how much faster my system boots now. (about 25 seconds)

...and thank you sea for the recommendation. :thumbs:
 
I've been using Diskeeper Pro for a while. I've found nothing wrong with it, and it runs nicely in the background.

Going to have to look into this "JkDefrag"
 
Saturos said:
No, not sarcasm. I'd dead serious. :| The only product Microsoft has ever done right was the base XP/NT kernel. (I'm not a M$ anti-fanboy. Really. :upstare:)
Click to expand...

If you were right on that one the entire corporate world would be ****ed. But I'll just leave it at that, this isn't the politics board. :cheers:
 
Microsoft does tons of things right. That's why we have DirectX and many other great technologies.

I actually like Microsoft, and started to appreciate what they do ever since I started getting into C# programming.
 
Raziaar said:
Microsoft does tons of things right. That's why we have DirectX and many other great technologies.

I actually like Microsoft, and started to appreciate what they do ever since I started getting into C# programming.
Click to expand...

A lot of people hate microsoft because of their business practices. In my opinion that hate is justified. But a lot of time that hate of their business practices spills in to people calling their software crap when in reality it isn't. They have some of the world's most talented programmers and engineers and in the end you really can't take that away from them no matter how hard you try.

And you are absolutely right, you don't start appreciating what kind of work goes in to their products until you start doing advanced tasks such as networking, databasing, or in your case programming.

/offtopic
 
Well, it's also the fact that I appreciate a lot of the things Microsoft tries to do when it comes to making their new technologies available for the masses...

Whether it is the fact that Microsoft offers students full fledged versions of some very expensive programs for a ridiculously low price... or whether they offer free express versions of many of their programs that I use, for example Microsoft Visual C# Express Edition, Microsoft XNA SDK Express edition, Microsoft Web Developer Express Express Edition and many more... that I really appreciate that they try to get people involved for free or a very low price whenever they can, thus bringing in new blood to the industry.

I love the express editions. I'll never feel the need to pirate any of it, because the express editions are free and they are more than enough for someone like me who is just learning. It won't be until I make full fledged large games that I might need the full complete versions.


I just wish I was a student of an actual school for part of the Dreamspark program, so I could actually download the full versions of these programs free of charge. :(
 
Raziaar although their express idea is interesting the only time I got to play around with it was MS SQL Express. And they cut down so many features that it made it virtually impossible to use. Once you get in to licensing issues on their server product lines they really start to screw you with no lube, especially if you are a small business. And then once you got all the licenses they try to force your hand in to upgrading when a new product line is released. In the end is the price worth it? A lot of times it is but that doesn't make it right.

I haven't had a chance to play around with anything relating to programming from MS but I have been wanting to get into ASP and ASP.net development so if that ever happens I'll be able to comment on that side. But they do seem to be getting much better. They seem to be embracing the open source world a little more and are actually following in the steps of google in launching cool educational programs for free.
 
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