Harddisk defragger
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Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.
Legend
DiGuru said:
If you don't want to pay, there's one built into XP.
I found a great free combo: BuzzSaw and DirMS. DirMS defragmented my whole drive in a few minutes, while BuzzSaw will keep a watch on it and do that in the background. Although the registration is non-intuitive.
Whats wrong with the built in defrager 
BlueTsunami said:Whats wrong with the built in defrager
You have to run it about 25 times, after which it has done about a fraction of what you want: defragment ALL files, and make the free space continuous. And it does nothing with the most important stuff, like the swap file and registry.
DiGuru said:
Hmmmm...I HAVE had issues with XP defragmenter not moving certain blocks of files. I guess i'll investigate an alternative.
http://www.diskeeperlite.com/
fairly quick and free,
if you want auto function and quicker buy the full version
fairly quick and free,
if you want auto function and quicker buy the full version
http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Utilities/Disk_Maintenance_and_Repair_Utilities/Power_Defrag_Lite.html
Works absolutely perfect on my XP rig.
0% fragmentation on all drives after defrag. Checked my results on Windows XP's defrag.
It takes maximum about a few minutes to complete on alarge drive.
Works absolutely perfect on my XP rig.
0% fragmentation on all drives after defrag. Checked my results on Windows XP's defrag.
It takes maximum about a few minutes to complete on alarge drive.
randycat99
Veteran
My opinion...avoid getting too obsessive about what gets defragmented and what does not. As long as you get most of it (99%?), the 1% that refuses to defrag isn't going to affect your world, at all. A lot of times these are just active cache files the system uses. So even if you did defrag them, they would be refragged the very next moment you did something on your computer, anyway.
Now if you really must have your way, you could always try booting from a 2nd partition or 2nd HD, and then defrag your original HD. That often does the trick for that last stubborn 1%, once the system that would be using those files is not active during the defrag process. Mind you, this will likely just get refragged when you boot-up in normal configuration, but at least you got a complete defrag once, right? After that, you have to just let it go that the system is going to want it's own way on a few things. It will still run just as well, either way. So just let it have it's way. You can still find gratification in keeping everything else routinely defragged as you like, thereon.
You should also be aware that there is some consensus (but not overwhelming consensus) that the modern HD is making its own data location optimizations in the physical domain, anyway. This is in contrast to a defragger app performing data location optimizations in the logical domain (which may end up being completely arbitrary in the physical domain). So some say that defragging is indicative of absolutely nothing. Take it for what you will, or not at all. Just don't freak out over the impact of that "last 1%", given that the whole physical vs. logical domain issue likely will be a far more influencing factor, ultimately.
Now here's something that I would be interested to hear some HD experts weigh in- if you have a 3 partition drive (also assuming single platter), with 1 smaller partition on each "end" and the big one in the middle, is it more advantageous (speed and access-wise) to install your OS at the small partition in the beginning or the small partition at the end of the HD? ...or does it matter, at all? ...or maybe the one in the middle ends up better than either end? :O
Now if you really must have your way, you could always try booting from a 2nd partition or 2nd HD, and then defrag your original HD. That often does the trick for that last stubborn 1%, once the system that would be using those files is not active during the defrag process. Mind you, this will likely just get refragged when you boot-up in normal configuration, but at least you got a complete defrag once, right?
After that, you have to just let it go that the system is going to want it's own way on a few things. It will still run just as well, either way. So just let it have it's way. You can still find gratification in keeping everything else routinely defragged as you like, thereon. You should also be aware that there is some consensus (but not overwhelming consensus) that the modern HD is making its own data location optimizations in the physical domain, anyway. This is in contrast to a defragger app performing data location optimizations in the logical domain (which may end up being completely arbitrary in the physical domain). So some say that defragging is indicative of absolutely nothing. Take it for what you will, or not at all. Just don't freak out over the impact of that "last 1%", given that the whole physical vs. logical domain issue likely will be a far more influencing factor, ultimately.
Now here's something that I would be interested to hear some HD experts weigh in- if you have a 3 partition drive (also assuming single platter), with 1 smaller partition on each "end" and the big one in the middle, is it more advantageous (speed and access-wise) to install your OS at the small partition in the beginning or the small partition at the end of the HD? ...or does it matter, at all? ...or maybe the one in the middle ends up better than either end? :O
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randycat99
Veteran
Yeah, but which part of the partition window on the screen corresponds to the "outer edge"? I could guess, but w/o any real indicators, it could just as well be completely the opposite of what you would expect.
randycat99 said:
Yes, but I had this file (newgrp.grp, the data file for Boiling Point), which had more than 3000 fragments. And after running the build-in defragmenter about 10 times (which should run in the background and do that automatically, AFAIK), it still consisted of over 3000 fragments.
Oh, and the swapfile consisted of hundreds of fragments as well.
In order to defragement a single file or a directory quickly use Contig from Sysinterals. It's free.
http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/Contig.html
http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/Contig.html
randycat99
Veteran
DiGuru said:
Something like that definitely seems to fall into the category of "oddball" files which seem to exist to soley to defy the user.
Have you tried to manually copy the file into another directory, then back into the original to replace it? Trust me- I'm not trying to be facetious, as I am just as curious to test my meddle with little things like this as I imagine you are. Set your swapfile to something tiny (like 64 MB), restart, defrag, and then set the swap file back to normal setting, and restart again. Does that do the trick?
Tip for the performance freak:DiGuru said:
Set cache file to a separate harddrive from your OS (and games), make it fixed size, and make sure it is the first file on the drive. That puts it at the outer edge of the disks, where data density is the greatest (fewer seeks) and data rates are the fastest.
Yes, that was the first thing I tried. It helped, but not by much. I suspected that Windows thought it was a system file of some kind. But it is definitely the fault of the build-in defragger. It is a big file (2.6 GB), so if the defragger doesn't try to make free space continious, it just doesn't fit. And it didn't even try to defrag it.randycat99 said:Something like that definitely seems to fall into the category of "oddball" files which seem to exist to soley to defy the user.
Yes, that's what I normally do (I just turn it off), but as it is 2 GB, it has the same problem as the file above.
Yes, that's what I normally do as well. But this was on my laptop. Then again, any serious defrag software should do that as well as put all the free space and directories together.Guden Oden said:
All the old ones (DOS) did that, but it changed the moment Microsoft declared that NTFS doesn't need to be defragged, ever.
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