This is somewhat incorrect. It isnt constantly defragging your HDD, rather "preventing" from fragmenting occuring by placing the bits of a file together as they are being written/moved, so that there is no need to run a manual defrag which then has to locate and move the bits of the file around. Thus actually prolonging the life of your HDD. I believe the specific feature is called "IntelliWrite"
Perfectdisk, for years : ) Just wanted to add my point of view. I'm a computer-expert and defragging since the old ms dos days (norton defrag). My last round of investigating 2 years ago, re-confirmed my choice for Perfectdisk. 4 years ago I still used Diskeeper, but found it (on the long run) too resource intensive. Also tried O&O which looked promissing with it's range of defrag strategies, but failed: it was like a dog chasing its own tail - it will never get there. Also, the biggest selling point for Perfectdisk was it's ability to defrag all aspects of NTFS with it's offline defragmentation techniques. In this thread, there seems to be a little confusion: Perfectdisk and Diskeeper both have auto-maintenance. BUT, Perfectdisk works with single-pass (meaning: one run should defrag your whole disk to perfection - not always true in practice, but certainly PD has a very fast convergence point to a near 100%). DK works with multiple-passes: it defrags your disk in subsequent passes. Both detect system resources, both work when computer is idle. Also, PD offers an extra screensaver-mode. DK tries to keep fragmentation at 0 when new files are created. It uses a real time "scanner" for this. But it fails in one aspect: you lose your biggest free space very fast. With PD, you would have all files organized WITH a maximum of freespace. Then, new files created by Windows have a big chance of being created unfragmented (or at least; are easily defragmented). PD is not perfect. Sometimes, it just doesn't get your swap-file defragmented, no matter how much free space there is available. I would love an option just to remove the pagefile at boot-time and reserve a big enough amount of freespace for Windows to recreate the pagefile. In this thread, I also found a reference to the program Puran Defrag Free - it looks promissing AND i wouldn't have to use a warez version, so I'm definitly checking it out - it even supports offline defragmentation. Unknown if it is as complete as PD's offline defrag. Also, when looking to the processes in Task Manager, you will see that PD handles less data (IO ... bytes) to achieve more results. For now, my choice remains Perfectdisk: set and forget with no noticeable performance impact (except for the services being started... They use RAM). For example: an extreme fragmented older harddisk, 60% full will require 3 to 6 defragmentation rounds to get it all defragmented. DK will need at least 15 defragmentation rounds, with more IO, more time and less contiguous freespace. Fragmentation still is important, ESPECIALLY on older computers. In extreme cases I've seen boot times of 20 minutes drop down to less then 5 minutes after defragmentation. Fast hardware, RAM and magnetic harddrives with plenty of cache (>16, 32MB) will reduce the need for defragmentation, but only for the short run. If your plan to use your computer for the next 5 years, you will NEED to defragment with offline tools! I'll repost if I find out more - in a few months all new products will be out and I will give them all a new chance. Peace! ~~~devnullius@googlewave.com~~~ Cuisvis hominis est errare, nullius nisi insipientis in errore persevare ------ All spelling mistakes are my own and may only be distributed under the GNU General Public License! - (© 95-1 by Coredump; 2-10 by DevNullius) EDIT: some afterthoughts... WHY is there still NO defrag program that takes defragmentation from a new view: containers. A user should be able to create custom containers and place them on the slow part or the fast part of the disk. Or any location they like, with an option to include freespace in that container. A realtime shield would be very convenient to keep the containers "clean" and to act like an intermediate with NTFS/windows - but DK seems to have that technology already... So : PP And even PD's after-the-fact cleanup would be great. Imagine a container with all your big movie files. Surely, they can go to the end of your disk. Frequently accessed or not, new or old...
Recently I was looking for a defrag soft that could meet my needs. I got a lot of good info from this thread. I tried Diskeeper 2010, PerfectDisk v11 and O&O Defrag v14 myself for comparison. And I wanna express my own opinion. I'm not an expert but an experienced user. I will discuss it in application levels. Each of the three softs has its own advantages for different uses. For my use, I chose PerfectDisk. I will explain in details. 1. Among these 3 defrag softs, I think O&O has different uses from DK and PD. O&O is not as "smart" as those softs. It takes more time to defrag but its complete optimize is to be done much more thoroughly. Unlike PD's smart placement O&O rearrange your blocks one by one from the very begining of your disk partition. I guess it's the speed and the performance you have to choose from. It can rearrange different types of files using zoning strategies. In default setting, system and applications files are sort by name, user data files are sort by date of last access, seldom used and very large files consolidate free space. You can also define your own zoning rules. It can monitor the disk if you leave the service on and has the screensaver mode. But I think it's a bit weak in automatic defrag technique compares to DK and PD. If you have enough time, and you need to rearrange your disk thoroughly. There is no doubt, O&O will be the number one choice. Or, if your disk has not been defragmented for a long time, it is necessary to use O&O to optimize your disk for at least one time. I have a 1T hard disk that contains lots of important data which will not be erased. I used O&O complete optimize once and for long term I will use PD. Since all of my files are already arranged thoroughly, the daily maintenance will be much easier. Next, I will mainly compare with DK and PD. 2. The one reason I don't like DK is its new technology of preventing the fragments. I am not sure how it works, but after I defrag the same partition. The charts shows DK was not arranging the data together. It left some blank spaces between. Maybe it will be easier and faster to deal with when new fragments are created. Further more, since I tried all these softs in one computer I forgot to turn off DK's IntelliWrite, at the same time I used PD to defrag a partition. I was confused at first when the charts showed different from the charts of an analyse right after the defrag. Then I realized it was DK IntelliWrite secretly change the disk arrangement while I still used PD to defrag. It shows 2 things: (1) DK certainly does a great work for background task. The PD defrag is really fast. But DK has already rearrange the disk in its own way. (2) DK's preventing technology is based on the sacrifice of the disk space. It can clearly be seen from the charts. 3. DK has more memory usage than PD. I agree with devnullius at this point. In other words, DK defrag your files all the time as long as there is new file created. PD will wait and get the job done when it reaches its operational level. I am not sure but I think just think DK may reduce the life of hard disk for its real-time operational method. Overall, if you have plenty of free spaces, less care about the memory usage taken (use large software very few) and prefer the works to be done automatically in background. DK is perfect. For me, I don't like any softwares sneaking around without my knowing. And I would not sacrifice any of the system resources for automatic works. I prefer to do them manually. I'd like to utilize my system to its maximum. If two can do the same work, I will choose the one with less features. Anyway, again the best is the one that can fits your needs.
Thanks violaly. It's the first time i've seen someone actually tested those defragment softwares properly. Very informative.
TIP: check out Puran Defrag, more background info? See link For the best free defragmentation tool, check out the unknown but raved program Puran Defrag Free. More questions and background, posted here: (not allowed) Google for: sevenforums 60135-puran-defrag-free . If warez / money is no problem, stick with Perfectdisk Pro. As a paranoid woman, I also install Puran for system-files defrag. Peace! Devvie
Have been with the HDD fragmentation paranoia since a couple of years and have tried diskeeper 2007---2010, perfect disk 12--14 and finally o & o Defrag..diskeeper used to be fastest.. but the recent release have added that much more bloat..but i like their frag sheild for the MFT..but their diskeeper interface is is more cluttered and disrganised.... perfect disk gui is cleaner ... but nothing extraordinary on perfect disk.. it does its job and thats it..... for a person who has now becme paranoid about background tasks running all the time, i give a thumbs down for both the programs and recommend "defraggler on demand"
Today, I just want to add my new point of views... Since last year I got inspired and tested one Windows 7 system to run 3 defraggers (PD, Puran & DisKeeper) at the same time. I tuned them all to work with each other and without moving the same files back and forth. Bascialy; PD did the offline defrag; puran did the running defrag & DisKeeper's shield had to keep all defragmented to begin with (which it didn't!). After some time (it actually worked), I found out on another test machine, that for Windows 7 setting the default Microsoft defragger to run daily just worked like a charm!! No, not on Vista. But on Win 7 it seems to be. I DO NOT know why. I can only confirm that I now schedule on ANY win 7 machine the default defragger and I'm happy without problems. That said, for older systems I switched, in the end, to Puran. Biggest mental step was to forget about the excellent PD offline defragging when it comes to all those exclusive NTFS elements. After trying many many many combinations of scheduling, in the end I settled quite happily with an offline defrag at first daily statup. Once a month another offline scan is scheduled to run and to do a complete defragmentation (for system files and the like). Today, I was reading this article (I don't think the author really really really is into defragging, but I might be behind in the latest developments...?). Article: www techsupportalert com/best-free-disk-de-fragmenter.htm#comment-87501 The top results are a little 'vague'. Still, I tried MyDefrag v4.3.1 because it's mentioned in the puran-comments. On Vista, I get a startup error (I guess this is easy to correct - just haven't looked at it yet). Worst is that the scheduled program does not run in the background (I'll investigate this too). BUT what I really love is that it finally comes with my 'container'-system! It divides the drive in 6 zones. Complete (monthly) defragmentation does NOT seem to be as fast as puran. Also, it takes more runs to achieve perfect results. Still, it did its job on a full HDD (>85% used). And it seems to run even smoother than puran does! For now I'm definitely going to keep this program BESIDES puran and see how it develops. I'll repost in this thread some time in the future... ; ) Also I'm going to check out Defraggler - it comes well recommended too! Peace! Devvie ~~~ notemail @ facebook.com ~~~ Cuisvis hominis est errare, nullius nisi insipientis in errore persevare —— All spelling mistakes are my own and may only be distributed under the GNU General Public License! – (© 95-1 by Coredump; 2-012 by DevNullius)
I use Perfect Disk and Perfect Disk 12 was slow but Perfect Disk 12.5 is alot faster then 12 and when I say alot I mean a whole lot fast.
Indeed, Perfect Disk is the best and its SSD optimization is top notch and doesn't harm your SSD life