Is W7 defrag tool enough?

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

Barso said:

Is the included W7 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.

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.

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.

Vertex said:

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.