Windows 7: Is W7 defrag tool enough?

Is the included Windows 7 derfag tool enough?
I am using perfectdisk 10 but it is always moving files about when using smartplacement.
And I see no real benefit to this smartplacement.

I think Windows defrag is enough in Windows 7. Besides, unless you change the default settings, it runs once a week anyways.

Smart Placement only benefits a Spinning Drive, and is not a very good idea for SSDs.

Basically what its doing is looking at what files have been modified recently, and how frequently they are modified.
For this reason, It really takes a couple weeks to a month for more accurate patterns to emerge, making it more beneficial.


Files that rarely ever change, get moved to the front of the disc.
Occasionally Modified will be in the middle, and Recently at the end of the drive.

It will also consoldate free space in this manner.


The idea is that, since the rarely modified seldom change, there will be little fragmentation happening.
The fragmentation that does occur, will be at the end of the drive with file being modified often.
This makes overall disk fragmentation less, and what does occur will be at the end of the drive resulting in faster defrags.

Theres a bit more to it, but thats the general idea.




You can also change Smart Placement strategys as well, as to what is considered "recent" ior "rarely" modified amoung other things.

Sure. The native defragger in Windows has always been enough (unless you listened to the makers of 3rd defraggers who wanted you to buy their products).

Yes, there are defraggers that are a bit more efficient, but so what? The second you start to use the computer again, the drive is used and fragmentation starts again. The ONLY time a 3rd party defragger is actually better, in my opinion, is when disk space is critically low and you need the most contiguous space for your swap file. However, that is just a band-aid fix anyway and a clear indication you need to delete a bunch of files and programs, or buy more drive space.

Well the major advantage for me of third party defrag tools is that they are easier to use, they do it faster than Windows 7's native defrag utility and they also offer "smart" technologies that are said to enhance the defragmentation method. The speed of third party defraggers are an advantage espcially if you are using a large hard drive that holds a lot of data.


But I wouldn't really do defrags unless I cleared my junk files first.

I think you make a mute point because Window 7 defrag is plenty adaquit and runs automaticly without you having to manually start it. Third party if you forget to run it it won't be done. Alot of people's problems arise from not running disk cleanup and defragging their comp IMO

I think people fail to realize that the inbox Windows defragmenter uses the same APIs as most 3rd party programs to scan the disk, find files, and move them (yes, since NT4 this has been the case). Any perceived speed difference is likely the placebo effect, or perhaps the "marketing" effect . I think the only time you would actually need a 3rd party app is when defragmenting the MFT (and if the drive was set up correctly initially, this should rarely ever be necessary) or a paging file offline, which Windows defrag cannot do online. Again, though, if these things were thought about first, they wouldn't be a problem later.

I've seen diskeeper specifically run faster against very large drives (1TB+) for example, but I've also seen the results be less efficient usage of the disk than Windows inbox defrag, so if you *do* have a defragmenter that is very fast, I'd be wary that it's also doing a piss-poor job.

My personal feel is that people out there spend far too much time defragging their hard drives. Unless you are doing substantial deletes on a regular basis, I simply don't feel that the tiny performance gain equates to any noticeable performance boost when doing regular defrags. I don't actively defrag a drive any more than once every 2-3 months.

Always a wise move and why I don't really like automatic defragging. It just does not make sense to me to defrag with potentially 1000s of tiny temp files and cookies in the mix. For this reason, I have scheduled defragging turned off.

Barso you will find out Windows 7 (Windows 7) has a lot of good things built in that works just great and there defrag is one of them along with there firewall. I have tested it and compared with 3RD party programs and it works great. I use mine on manual and check (analyze) if defrag is needed about once a month. Seldom is my system more that 1% defraged which means a defrag isn't needed. It's very easy to use. It does take in my case about 2 minutes longer that a 3RD party program. Maybe it's doing a more complete job. By the way, you don't get to watch all the little colored boxes jumping around but who cares. B/S with my Intel Premier Dealer I found out the built in defrager is contracted from Diskeeper which in my opinion is the best on the market. On my XP-PRO I use Diskeeper 10 Pro Premier and of course it works great. I also use the disk cleanup (built in) before checking if I need to defrag. Windows 7 is not like the older operating system it doesn't need all the 3RD party programs or all the tinkering we use to do in the older systems.