Is PerfectDisk REALLY the best defragger?

[Unknown Soldier]

I only defrag my 4GB OS partition (NTFS), and I use the windows defrag from compmgmt.msc.
it's fast enough and keeps the OS and apps in %programfiles% responsive

my other partitions are 32GB and 80GB FAT32, never defragged, they are several years old, especially the 32GB one which I carried from a preceding disk, it's full and 4 year old at least
what's the best, smallest free program for defragging FAT?

If you have 32GB of space on the 80GB .. then move everything over to the 80GB .. reformat HDD and Move everything back.

As for proggies .. Defrag is free

US

 

[mito]

Considering that current systems are relatively fast (cpu, memory + fast ide/sata controllers + fast disks), is disk defragging really a must?

 

[Rys]

Considering that current systems are relatively fast (cpu, memory + fast ide/sata controllers + fast disks), is disk defragging really a must?

Your disks are the slowest part of your PC. The slower they get, the more you feel the limitations of that bottleneck.

 

[Rur0ni]

Your disks are the slowest part of your PC. The slower they get, the more you feel the limitations of that bottleneck.

This is definitely true. I make it a habit to keep things defragged. Need to raid sometime.

 

[mito]

Your disks are the slowest part of your PC. The slower they get, the more you feel the limitations of that bottleneck.

I understand. But what performance hit can we expect? Are we talking about a few miliseconds more to load some file?

 

[Tahir2]

When everything is working in nanoseconds you really notice those extra milliseconds.

Edit: I like PerfectDisk, did try a few other programs but I got the best results with PerfectDisk.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

I understand. But what performance hit can we expect? Are we talking about a few miliseconds more to load some file?

Depends purely on the application. If it's something that just loads into memory and then runs from there, it's a little extra time to load a file. If it's something that accesses the disk regularly, then you could see hitches and catches in gameplay as the disk controller inturrupts other things to get access and then waits to move drive heads. You've also got to take into account that there are other things accessing the drive too, like the OS for the swap file, other applications, etc.

Most everything running in the PC is basically shifting electrons about, but when it comes to disk access, you've got to deal with the much, much slower business of mechanically moving drive heads and spinning platters. When that happens it's a massive bottleneck because drives are so much slower than everything else.

 

[thekey]

Your disks are the slowest part of your PC. The slower they get, the more you feel the limitations of that bottleneck.

Nonsense it would only make loading times last longer- not in game. The HDD should never work while playing.

 

[Moloch]

Nonsense it would only make loading times last longer- not in game. The HDD should never work while playing.

*shakes head*

 

[micron]

I prefer Perfect Disk.

 

[The_Wolf_Who_Cried_Boy]

And register one more vote for Perfectdisk 7.0.
It seems the most thorough, it's also cheaper than Diskeeper 10 (Professional).

 

[mjtdevries]

Most games will hardly touch the harddisk while playing. Just for loading levels.
In that scenario you will not notice much.

There are exceptions of course. Civ3 was a game that used the harddisk a lot. There you didn't even need a fragmented disk to feel the impact. Playing on a laptop harddisk instead of a desktop harddisk made a huge difference.

But you need a pretty horrible fragmentation before you start noticing it in other applications (without running benchmarks).

On the machine I mentioned earlier I really noticed it in accessing movie files and running quickpar and such tools on them. But then you are talking about several thousand fragments per file.
Also those large files will not fit in the cache which will make the impact of fragmentation bigger.

In general I would say, that IF your PC is horrible slow sometimes AND it is then constantly accessing the harddisks AND you see quite a lot of fragmentation, THEN you might benefit from defragmenting the drive.

But if you just have some stutters in a game I wouldn't expect too much from it. I have never in my life had a situation where a defrag fixed such an issue.
Still defragmenting the drive can never hurt.

 

[mito]

That's how I think too.

 

[suryad]

I switched from Diskeeper to PD and I love it. It is noticeably faster especially in booting and loading up apps which is all that I really needed to convince me! I did some non-scientific timing and apps loaded up a second or two quicker...especially larger apps.