For many years I used the MyDefrag application for PC defragmentation and maintenance. It was an excellent program. But I read it was discontinued in 2015 most likely due to lack of economic support, and last version was 4.3.1. I wanted to ask, are there alternatives to this program nowadays? Thanks.
First, the JKDefrag/MyDefrag program still works well, you can script it a lot. Unfortunately, there are a few bugs left that were never fixed. (I was an active community member, then). Lately, the author's home page has re-appeared. Maybe development will resume some day. Hope dies last. As for alternatives, take a look at UltraDefrag. The 7.1.3 version is FOSS, version 8+ is sold.
Thanks everyone. But wait, maybe I'm forgetting something... What with SSDs? Do they frag just like rotating plate disks? Or they don't and they never need any defragmentation?
Their file systems fragment exactly like the ones on HDD. But the impact is different. SSDs are organized in pages, and due to their design the access times are the same over the whole capacity. SSD's performance degrades for different reasons, and Windows already takes care of it (TRIM, minimizing file extents).
Absolutely right - they can never be defragmented because they are entirely electronics. Basically everything is stored at the level of the electronic energy levels of the atoms and nothing can be changed there. The electronic energy levels of the crystals are in no way spatially fixed and there is no way you can lock them in any particular area of space. They are located always everywhere throughout the space used by the crystal. If you get a bit of time, study the crystal structure and the theories of energy stored in the crystal. There is many of them. Well, to put it simply, it is an energy field that can only be stable at certain distances from the crystal core, ie there is only very specific energetical levels wher atom can be stable for very long time. These levels are used on SSD. You may have heard something about atomic and nuclear physics. That would be helpful in understanding. And there is absolutely nothing to do with old defrag software, there is not possible to defragment absolutely nothing, everything is always everywhere...