Are Windows 7 Disc Cleanup & Defrag Tools Enough?

[DBone]

I have my opinion, but I'm looking for others . Do you think a W7 machine, using IE9 as the only browser, that is maintained only by the on-board Disc Cleanup, Defrag and IE9 Browser Maintenance tool, will run as well as the same machine maintained with CCleaner, and a 3rd party defragger over the life of that machine?

 

[logicearth]

I don't see why it matters? You clean up a few files ~bah~ big deal your computer is still slow.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

I have my opinion, but I'm looking for others . Do you think a W7 machine, using IE9 as the only browser, that is maintained only by the on-board Disc Cleanup, Defrag and IE9 Browser Maintenance tool, will run as well as the same machine maintained with CCleaner, and a 3rd party defragger over the life of that machine?

I don't know how you could possibly measure that to make a comparison.

Built-in tools are rarely enough for the obsessive and it's usually easier to give in to obsessions than deal with the demoralizing and nerve-wracking suspicion that SOMETHING may not be QUITE right. That won't do.

 

[GeneO]

Certainly enough for me. If Microsoft can screw it up, third party can screw it up even worse.

 

[DBone]

I don't see why it matters? You clean up a few files ~bah~ big deal your computer is still slow.

Thanks

 

[lehnerus2000]

Flash Cookies?

Does anyone know if the standard Disc Cleanup kills Flash cookies?
CCleaner is supposed to.

I've read that the MS defragger, isn't as "aggressive" as other defraggers.
I suspect that the more "aggressive" a defragger is, the longer it takes to perform its defrag.

 

[DBone]

Does anyone know if the standard Disc Cleanup kills Flash cookies?
CCleaner is supposed to.

I've read that the MS defragger, isn't as "aggressive" as other defraggers.
I suspect that the more "aggressive" a defragger is, the longer it takes to perform its defrag.

No, the W7 Disc Cleanup does not clean Flash, but you can clean Flash from the Control Panel > Adobe Flash. I don't know if a 3rd party defragger knows any better then MS about where to place files. They all tout that they "optimize by placing files at the fastest part of the disc", but I just don't know.

 

[lehnerus2000]

No, the W7 Disc Cleanup does not clean Flash, but you can clean Flash from the Control Panel > Adobe Flash.

Assuming you trust Adobe to get it right.

I use a script to run FF and when I shut FF down, the script runs CCleaner.
I had an annoying experience which (I think) was caused by left over garbage in the Internet cache.

I don't know if a 3rd party defragger knows any better then MS about where to place files. They all tout that they "optimize by placing files at the fastest part of the disc", but I just don't know.

The Windows 7 defragger doesn't give any indication of what it is actually doing.

If you ran the XP defragger, you got a little picture of what it was supposedly doing.
However I've noticed that it often leaves "holes" which other files can be written into, thus becoming fragmented.
This means that you regularly have to run the defragger.

A more effective way to defrag (it can be time consuming though) is to copy all of the files off of a partition.
Obviously you need to delete everything off of the partition, once you are sure that the copying process was successful.
Then copy the files back again.
They should then form a "solid block" of files.
If those files aren't modified (or deleted) that area should remain fragment free.

I'm not sure that is safe to do with your OS partition.
Obviously you'd have to do that from "outside" Windows.
If you want to try it, remember to make a backup first.

If you are really paranoid about fragmentation, you should defrag your drive, before installing new programs.

I don't believe in "optimisation" claims (for real world PCs).
I suspect that you could do it, if your system was static (i.e. no files being added/deleted/modified).

 

[logicearth]

The cost of defragmenting every file so it was continues does not justify the return of investment (ROI). In simple terms, you spend more time defragmenting then you get back in performance, it does not add up. Microsoft figured this out, the rest have not. The built in defragmentation in Windows only works on files that will matter most where the cost comes to almost equal to the ROI. Larger files are not going to see much benefit if any at all.

Course you could go obsessive and defragement every single day and every single file, but five seconds after you defragement...OH NO!!! Another file expanded and is now defragmented again! It is stupid honestly. Microsoft's approach to removing all the flashy boxes and graphs from the UI is well deserved. Defragmentation should be behind the scenes, you should not monitor it, watch it, obsessive over it. Just ignore it, let it work behind the scenes optimizing those things that will actually benefit from it.

All the reasoning behind Microsoft's decision is here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/e7/archive/...d-engineering-the-windows-7-improvements.aspx

In Vista, we analyzed the impact of defragmentation and determined that the most significant performance gains from defrag are when pieces of files are combined into sufficiently large chunks such that the impact of disk-seek latency is not significant relative to the latency associated with sequentially reading the file. This means that there is a point after which combining fragmented pieces of files has no discernible benefit. In fact, there are actually negative consequences of doing so. For example, for defrag to combine fragments that are 64MB or larger requires significant amounts of disk I/O, which is against the principle of minimizing I/O that we discussed earlier (since it decreases total available disk bandwidth for user initiated I/O), and puts more pressure on the system to find large, contiguous blocks of free space. Here is a scenario where a certainly amount of fragmentation of data is just fine – doing nothing to decrease this fragmentation turns out to be the right answer!

 

[DBone]

Good info. I'm wondering how much "junk" the Disc Cleanup tool leaves untouched when compared to say CCleaner? Even with the default, and supposedly non-aggressive settings of CCleaner, it always finds more files to delete after I have run the Disc Cleanup. What are your opinions on those files that are not deleted by the on-board tool, continuing to grown in size if never removed by a 3rd party tool? Heck, do they even matter?

 

[logicearth]

Only matters if you have a tiny hard drive. Those files won't affect performance until your HDD is so full about 80-90% full.

 

[lehnerus2000]

CCEnhancer

There is an add-on for CCleaner called CCEnhancer.

It adds even more cleaning options.

 

[torre]

http://www.sevenforums.com/general-discussion/185399-hdd-lost-space.html#post1569746


There is a post in the above thread on how to do an "extended disk cleanup" which may/may not be beneficial.

If you are concerned about optimum performance and files, consider a clean reinstall ever so often. Though that may be considered an extreme.