Is file-optimization and real-time scanning necessary in Windows 7?

piratesmvp04 · Apr 29, 2011

Hi, I'm new the forums...

I've been doing a lot of research on this and I know this topic has been covered a million times, so please bear with me.

I'm specifically wondering about the "file-optimization" features in third party defraggers such as Diskeeper or Iobit Smart Defrag (which I use). I know that Microsoft has refined their own defragger, but it seems to me that it has no obvious file optimization and it of course does not have real-time defragging.

I've been using Iobit Smart Defrag for a long time and it seems to do a good job of keeping my computer in shape. But, if the Windows 7 defrag works good enough, I'd prefer to just use that and get rid of Smart Defrag to free up CPU and RAM. I'd obviously lose out on the real-time scanning, file optimization, and the boot time scan that Iobit just added to their latest release. But, are these features really necessary for fast, clean performance of Windows 7? Or are these just gimics from third party companies to get me to purchase their software?

Thanks in advance.

OldMX · Apr 30, 2011

Windows built-in defrag does one hell of a good job, no need for 3rd party defraggers anymore.

mickey megabyte · Apr 30, 2011

piratesmvp04 said:
... Or are these just gimics from third party companies to get me to purchase their software?...

more or less yes.

they may make a small bit of difference - but we're talking milliseconds here.

oh, and welcome to sevenforums, piratesmvp04!

severedsolo · Apr 30, 2011

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Windows defrag in the background anyway? My PC is rarely on at the scheduled time (3am on a Wednesday if memory serves) and my drives are never seriously fragmented.

logicearth · Apr 30, 2011

You want realtime defragmentation? Do you also want to reduce the actual performance of your computer? Understand I/O is one of the most expensive operations a computer does. Adding realtime defragmentation makes I/O the much more expensive when communicating with the Hard Drive. Is that a trade off you are wanting?

Now in my opinion. These things are nothing but gimmicks. There is no need to constantly clean up junk files or defragment every single waking day of the computer's life. It is hardly that much of an issue. The Return of Investment you spend on doing all of this stuff is nil, you give more in Investment then you get returned. Not worth it.

Vertex · Apr 30, 2011

severedsolo said:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Windows defrag in the background anyway? My PC is rarely on at the scheduled time (3am on a Wednesday if memory serves) and my drives are never seriously fragmented.

Yeah, Windows has auto defrag schedule in the background anyway and many users are not aware of this. You can set its time anyway but many if not most users are not aware of this running in the background. To me, its better if the user can choose which time he wants to defrag, I say AFTER doing a thorough cleanup on junk files with CCleaner is the best time to do a defrag because there would be less files to defrag at that point making it finish quicker.

Windows's own defragger is also rather slow. Its good if you use some free third party defraggers like Defraggler. I experienced no harm in doing this and third party defraggers allow you to choose when to defrag and they seem to finish quicker.

However, I read somewhere that you should NEVER defrag solid state drives (SSDs).

Vertex · Apr 30, 2011

logicearth said:
You want realtime defragmentation? Do you also want to reduce the actual performance of your computer? Understand I/O is one of the most expensive operations a computer does. Adding realtime defragmentation makes I/O the much more expensive when communicating with the Hard Drive. Is that a trade off you are wanting?

Now in my opinion. These things are nothing but gimmicks. There is no need to constantly clean up junk files or defragment every single waking day of the computer's life. It is hardly that much of an issue. The Return of Investment you spend on doing all of this stuff is nil, you give more in Investment then you get returned. Not worth it.

That's an opinion, mate. However in my opinion, it is necessary to defrag the hard drive periodically lets say after a few weeks or once a month after a thorough disk cleanup. In my experience it has also improved performance and this improvement on performance is much more noticeable on computers with lesser resources like like those with just 1-2GBs RAM or less.

I dislike realtime defragmentation cause it stresses the disk. However, it is nessessary to do a manual defrag after some time. Microsost still advices periodic defragmentation of the hard disks that's why they had a defrag utility built into Windows...Third party defrag software seem to do it quicker. 3 years I've been using my computer, I defrag it manually using a third party software and its still alive.

However, Defragmentation should NOT be done on SSDs from a source I read.

logicearth · Apr 30, 2011

Vertex said:
That's an opinion, mate.

Umm...I believe I clearly indicated "Now in my opinion." So is it really necessary to tell me I told an opinion and arguing my opinion as it is just that an opinion just as yours is?

Now if you are saying my statement of realtime defragmentation is an opinion then you would be wrong to think that. As for the speed of Macrosoft's defragmentation, it doesn't need to be fast. It was designed not to be watched it was designed to run in the background and take little resources as possible. It does not need to be fast for the way it was designed to be used.

mickey megabyte · Apr 30, 2011

none of the above is necessarily true, merely my opinion at one point in time...

now, where have i heard that before?

Vertex · Apr 30, 2011

logicearth said:
Umm...I believe I clearly indicated "Now in my opinion." So is it really necessary to tell me I told an opinion and arguing my opinion as it is just that an opinion just as yours is?

Now if you are saying my statement of realtime defragmentation is an opinion then you would be wrong to think that. As for the speed of Macrosoft's defragmentation, it doesn't need to be fast. It was designed not to be watched it was designed to run in the background and take little resources as possible. It does not need to be fast for the way it was designed to be used.

I am deeply sorry if I had rather been not specific but this is the part of your statement that I contradict. My explanation as to why is on my statement above.

logicearth said:
These things are nothing but gimmicks. There is no need to constantly clean up junk files or defragment every single waking day of the computer's life. It is hardly that much of an issue. The Return of Investment you spend on doing all of this stuff is nil, you give more in Investment then you get returned. Not worth it.

logicearth · Apr 30, 2011

So are you saying it should be done every single day or do you actually agree with me it should not be done every single day...I don't recall ever saying it should not be done, just not done every single day as the ROI when doing that is nil. Maybe I'm just being dense to the contradiction you are referring to...?

* Underlined "every single day" to make sure it was clear.

Vertex · Apr 30, 2011

logicearth said:
So are you saying it should be done every single day or do you actually agree with me it should not be done every single day...I don't recall ever saying it should not be done, just not done every single day as the ROI when doing that is nil. Maybe I'm just being dense to the contradiction you are referring to...?

* Underlined "every single day" to make sure it was clear.

Sorry if I caused any trouble. I agree that it should NOT be done on every single day and if read my 2nd post on this thread, I said it should be done periodically, once every few weeks or once a month.

Vertex said:
............. it is necessary to defrag the hard drive periodically lets say after a few weeks or once a month after a thorough disk cleanup. In my experience it has also improved performance and this improvement on performance is much more noticeable on computers with lesser resources like like those with just 1-2GBs RAM or less.

I dislike realtime defragmentation cause it stresses the disk. However, it is necessary to do a manual defrag after some time............

However, Defragmentation should NOT be done on SSDs from a source I read.

But you did say this:

logicearth said:
................It is hardly that much of an issue. The Return of Investment you spend on doing all of this stuff is nil, you give more in Investment then you get returned. Not worth it.

And this is what made me think that you don't see any importance to it at all.

Taliseian · May 3, 2011

From my personal experience, doing a full defrag with optimizing free space is a good thing to do after a clean install of an OS or perhaps after a lot of software install/uninstall.

Outside of that, running CCleaner and just a quick optimization pass every couple of weeks is good enough to keep your files in place which reduces seek times.

But....NEVER run a defragger on an SSD drive. It is not necessary since read and seek times are already fast and the read/write that a defragger does would wear out the flash cells on an SSD very quickly.

T

piratesmvp04 · May 3, 2011

Thanks for all your answers, everyone.

Taliseian, do you also recommend a full defrag after installing Windows 7 via factory restore disk? Also, when you say "quick optimization pass" are you referring to just a regular defrag or the special optimization feature that third-party defragmentation software offers?

Thanks.

Taliseian · May 3, 2011

When using a recovery disk (to be honest, I don't like those HP or Gateway recovery disks as they tend to install way too much bloatware - google "decrapifier"), I would probably do a complete optimization afterward.

The Quick Pass is just a simple defrag of recently changed files where a complete optimization would move the directory information and other important files to the portion of the disk that performs the best. It sounds like you've got the right idea about them. If you do a quick pass every week or so, they should go very fast where a complete optimization could take a while -- on a heavily fragmented large drive I've seen complete optimizations take hours and upward to a day or so based on size, number of fragmented files, and speed of the drive.

T

piratesmvp04 · May 3, 2011

Taliseian said:
When using a recovery disk (to be honest, I don't like those HP or Gateway recovery disks as they tend to install way too much bloatware - google "decrapifier"), I would probably do a complete optimization afterward.

The Quick Pass is just a simple defrag of recently changed files where a complete optimization would move the directory information and other important files to the portion of the disk that performs the best. It sounds like you've got the right idea about them. If you do a quick pass every week or so, they should go very fast where a complete optimization could take a while -- on a heavily fragmented large drive I've seen complete optimizations take hours and upward to a day or so based on size, number of fragmented files, and speed of the drive.

T

Yeah, I don't like the HP restore discs either; I always have a ton of uninstalling to do. I usually use Iobit uninstaller to clean out leftover registry entries, but the decrapifier software looks interesting. Companies these days don't ship out actual copies of the Windows dvd, so that's pretty much the only option...

So, am I correct in assuming that you recommend a third-party defragmentation software with optimization features? And, what is the different between file optimization on those software and the defrag that the built-in Windows one does?

Thanks again!

Taliseian · May 4, 2011

Again, these are my personal preferences....there are those who feel the built-in defragger is more than enough and that's good.

From what I've seen on my own systems, the way that third party defraggers do their job seems to me to leave my system in a better state as far as fewer fragmented files and specific files (like swap files, boot files, and directory structure files) in locations on the disk that work better for the OS.

If I recall, the built-in defragger is a limited version of one of the third party ones....I want to say DiskKeeper...and its advantage is its built in and it does a good job. Third party ones need to be installed, options set, and schedules made so its a bit more involved, but once you've gone over the options it can also be "set it and forget it". The options vary as to level of defragmentation (consolidation of free space to complete optimization) to optimizing boot files and page files, to offline defragmentation (where certain locked system files are able to be optimized during the boot process before Windows starts).

T

sbrads · May 5, 2011

In my experience, programs do load up a bit quicker on a well used Win7 system if a good 3rd party 'optimizer' defragger has been used rather than the Win7 one. It probably doesn't make much difference on setup with a few programs but once you get into the hundreds...

I don't think it's mild fragmentation as such which causes slowdown, it's having files grouped in the best place on the drive for performance that helps, as this saves the drive head having to waggle about so much looking for the next file.

I have used and tested loads of defraggers but these days I tend to stick with MyDefrag using a script called 'System Disk Robust Monthly' only. Once a month as well

I use this because it does what I claim above plus it doesn't slow down bootup which a lot of defraggers do (but not the Win7 one). Some are absolutely terrible for this - their optimizations aren't optimum shall we say - they can't be if they triple boot times.

logicearth · May 5, 2011

Superfetch, sbrads, is what makes applications load faster, not defragmentation. Superfetch watches what you do on the computer and loads files or application into memory before the application needs them.

sbrads · May 6, 2011

logicearth said:
Superfetch, sbrads, is what makes applications load faster, not defragmentation. Superfetch watches what you do on the computer and loads files or application into memory before the application needs them.

No, I've allowed for that - it's active in both cases. The Windows 7 defragger is fine but I still think there are slightly better ones around (and worse ones). Not worth worrying about really for most users, just use the Windows one if you don't mind losing a few seconds here and there.

The best free boost in bootup speed is to be had by using Microsoft's own Performance Toolkit as described here.....How to speed up boot process under Windows Vista or Windows 7 - MSFN Forum

Is file-optimization and real-time scanning necessary in Windows 7?

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