Definitive Best Defragmenter 2011

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

An updated "Best Defragmenter" poll for 2011. Please use this as a reference when researching Defrag utilities. As time goes on, the poll can be updated to add further options.

Happy Voting!

[Stingray]

Defragmenter in 2011? Are you serious?

[Zaic]

Windows7 does defrag by itself when it has nothing better to do (when idle)

why bother with some prehistoric software like defrags antiviruses and firewalls :)

[soldier1st]

Windows7 does defrag by itself when it has nothing better to do (when idle)

why bother with some prehistoric software like defrags antiviruses and firewalls :)

i will disagree with the antivirus part. as it has a use still.

[ipeters61]

I'm saying Auslogic. I was trying to install Linux on my laptop a while ago and I couldn't shrink my Windows partition any further (it was 222 GB, I wanted about 30 GB free for Linux). I tried defragging using Defraggler, but it wouldn't move any data to the front of the drive. I saw that some of the data it wouldn't move was in C:\Windows, so I rebooted into a WinPE environment and tried running it there, still no dice. I looked around on the internet and various forums said that Auslogic had a feature to move data to the front of the drive.

It also seemed to do a better job at defragging than Defraggler.

Oh, and it's free.

[Athlonite]

PerfectDisk Hands Down

the way a drive is suppose to look 24/7, I defrag my drives ever Morning at 1am and then have a daily back up to my server at 3 am.

no matter how hard you try windows SwapFile will alwazs leave some sort of fragment file behined unless u do a boot defrag on ever start up. As well as have the PageFile set with a min/max vaule at the same size.

What version of PD is that as mine doesn't look like that :unsure:

Perfect disk 2011 for me after using Diskeeper and OnO I've found PD the best :cool:

[Esfirius]

Mydefrag (which is free, by the way!)

The power of Mydefrag is just AMAZING - even compared to O&O and Perfectdisk. It provides you with a proper drive map without those nonsense clusters, has got around 12 different scripts (and you can even write your own ones pretty easy!), extremely lightweight (lwhole programm just 3.5MB) and actually works pretty damn well! Love it :rolleyes:

[norseman]

Where's the "Defragging is for poor people" option?

+1

SSD and forget about it. Who cares if your "data" drives become fragmented anymore.

[devnulllore]

+1 for Raxco Perfectdisk. The real difference is most defraggers do just that they "defrag" Raxco Perfect disk consolidates all your dat based on usage statistics that it compiles while you use your computer and moves it to the front of the drive, with the excepsion of unmovable system files. It will still do those with a boot time defrag. It also has an aggressinve defrag mode that takes the most used data and moves that to the front of the drive and leaves a small buffer between that and not so frequently used data to keep any defraged files close to the edge. This enables what is called short stroking where the HD heads have the least amount of movement to read data....Some deep reading on this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_stroking%23cite_note-0 and http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/short-stroking-hdd%2c2157.html.

Now with Raxco Perfectdisk 12 it has more advanced algorithms which keep a closer eye on you usage statistics thus allowing for faster reads.

Thanks,

[leesmithg]

Perfect disk does the job flawlessly

It does.

I use the server version, soon version 12 will be released, version 12 home has been.

I used O&O for sometime and it got worse since version 10, it crashes a lot and lags your system.

[xxtechxx]

why most people choose perfect disk?? which better with auslogics?

[XMatteX]

Defraggler is the best. It's free, easy to use, quite fast and it's translated in a lot of languages, so it can also be used if you don't understand well English.

[M V E]

defrag c: -b /U

+

defrag c: /U

Simply and powerful.Or Defraggler.

[scaramonga]

None.

Simply not needed in this day and age.

[Skyfrog]

Windows Vista and 7 does it in the background, as it should be. It's not something anyone should be concerned with or even know about and as for all the third party programs...placebos. I can't wait for SSDs to take over so defragmenting finally dies.

[devnulllore]

I have read in adverts that Auslogics defrag will do a boot time defrag of the system files including the page file but for the life of me I cannot find any settings in it to do that. Has anyone else got it to do a boot time defrag? Sysinternals Pagedefrag does not work on Windows 7 and I have been using Smart Defrag 2 to defrag the system files for now. Does anyone know any good boot time defraggers?

BTW ignore my earlier post on Raxcos Perfect disk. I had a series of incidents with it that I would rather not talk about but I have currently sworn against it. Let me just say if you've upgraded to v.12 then you are a guinea pig or a beta tester at best.

Thanks,

[+Xinok Subscriber²]

I have read in adverts that Auslogics defrag will do a boot time defrag of the system files including the page file but for the life of me I cannot find any settings in it to do that. Has anyone else got it to do a boot time defrag? Sysinternals Pagedefrag does not work on Windows 7 and I have been using Smart Defrag 2 to defrag the system files for now. Does anyone know any good boot time defraggers?

Defraggler and Puran Defrag have boot-time defrag. As for which is better, I have no idea.

[devnulllore]

Defraggler and Puran Defrag have boot-time defrag. As for which is better, I have no idea.

I know Puran does but I cannot find an option in Defraggler.

[+Xinok Subscriber²]

I know Puran does but I cannot find an option in Defraggler.

It's in the menu: Settings -> Boot Time Defrag.

[soldier1st]

Why pay for a defrag when windows can do it for you and did i mention free?

[Ve7878]

I just use the built in one and have it running automatically every day.

[davisrs]

I pitted Auslogics , Defraggler, DirMS, Ultimate Defrag (DiskTrix) and UltraDefrag (GPL License) against one another, latest versions.

Ultradefrag was the speed winner, but amazingly, Ultimate Defrag used about 1/10 th the CPU time and almost no IO resources of the others, at least not showing up in Task Manager's process usage columns!

Ultimate Defrag appears to be the best for use while still performing other tasks.

Once defragged, I did not compare it with Buzzsaw.

RSD

[azure.sapphire]

I generally use Defraggler and Puran Defrag.

[devnulllore]

Hi,

OK I understand what a basic defragmentation program is supposed to do. That is take fragments of files that are out of place and put them together with the files they belong with. Some Defraggers even consolidate the data and move it all closer to the front of the drive, that is the optimization some talk about. But what about programs like PerfectDisk. I used to use PerfectDisk religiously until version 12. Now when I have it on it's like the 1000 pound gorilla in the room. Not only does it run 2 services but it has 2 programs running at all times in the background, PDAgent and PDEngine. Then it has this thing called Optiwrite which keeps working on your hard drive at all times to prevent fragmentation and Stealth defrag which is supposed to only run background defrag when the system is idle, but I found it working one time when I was doing a backup of the drive it was defragging.....NOT a good thing.

I have read that Diskeeper works in the same way. It's getting to the point where my system runs remarkably slower with programs like PerfectDisk installed.

I have been trying to stay away from huge bloated programs and I think the biggest time and resource hogs are my graphic editing tools and Express Web. But when they are closed, THEY ARE CLOSED and using NO resources.

Sorry to those who swear by PerfectDisk and Diskeeper but there seems to be a handful of reliable and fairly standalone free defraggers out there, with the exception of all the bells and whistles, do the exact same job. So what is still the attraction to the big bloated defraggers?

[Copernic Reporter]

On Windows 7, 3rd party defraggers are pretty useless. The built-in defragmentation tool is perfect.

[Marshall Veteran]

So what is still the attraction to the big bloated defraggers?

A false sense of performance enhancement is what drives most to use 'bloated' defragmenting software. Keep in mind that the vast majority of the population couldn't point out the taskbar if you asked them to.

Defragging is redundant at best in modern operating systems, Windows 8 will bring such software to dwindle.