Defrag?

kf9vh · 17 Apr 2011

Is the defrag that is in window 7 good enough or is they another that one should download and use?

Thanks

linnemeyerhere · 17 Apr 2011

I've always found MS defrag to work fine.

ignatzatsonic · 17 Apr 2011

Windows 7 defragger is good enough.

I think there is a high degree of correlation between obsessive-compulsive disorder and defragger discussions and opinions. If you just can't stand to see defragmentation, you are going to be unhappy if you can't drive the defragmentation percentage down. Whether it has any measurable effect on performance is irrelevant.

whs · 17 Apr 2011

And you should defrag as little as possible. There is very little performance to be gained, but the defrag is a big stress on the disk. And an SSD you NEVER defrag.

Wishmaster · 17 Apr 2011

The built in defrag does do just fine.

I do tend to agree the idea that defrag is not as important of a factor these days as it once was. Which give even more wieght to the built in defrag being more than adequate.

Personally, I prefer Perfect Disk, although it is a paid program.
Mainly because:
It has a few different methods of defragmenting drives (and a different method can be applied to seperate drives/partitions)
Its has more options/features and much more control of defragmenting and schedules.
Also its MS certified.
I like it because I can get a graph of each drive, have it show the % of space certain things take, where they are located etc.
(Kinda like Directory STAT)

Really comes down to what features you want/need, if that even matters to you for a defragger.
In the grand scheme of thing, the default defrag is fine..
UNLESS you have a SSD. Then its a really,really bad idea.

If you have a SSD, the only option you have is a consolodate on occasions, but it has to be a defragmenter designed for it. Like PD.
That or never defrag it at all. Which will be fine as well for a SSD

scrotiny · 18 Apr 2011

If you can't achieve some necessary task (like shrinking your system partition because of a file placed at the end of the partition) then a search might lead you to using a defrag other than the MS version. That is why I tried Defraggler, which achieved the task, but also lead me to PerfectDisk. Although a bit expensive for what it does, and I tend to agree that defragging is not that necessary, PerfectDisk has many options and features as the previous post stated making it one of the best on the market. Although I tend to go for free software if it does the job I will spend cash when I think it worthwhile.

techcal · 18 Apr 2011

Well, the MS defrag is better than no defrag, and you should definitely defrag your drives regularly for the best disk performance. Personally I prefer automatic defraggers (I used a paid one) with more control, better GUI, and some level of defrag customization for each drive than what the default utility offers. YMMV ofcourse.

dragon6687 · 20 Apr 2011

MS defrag is crap. It's horribly slow and pathetically inefficient. Try out auslogic defrag (you can google it easily) it's super fast, crazy efficient and it actually gives you a graphical representation of your drive and what it's doing! (what a concept) It will do twice what the MS defrag will do in half that time =) oh and it's free! =)

pparks1 · 20 Apr 2011

I use the built-in defragger. And I usually just let it run automatically as it's supposed to do. It's extremely rare for me to actually run a manual defrag on any machine. I haven't ever been able to quantify a performance gain with a defrag, so I simply don't bother doing it anymore. Others will disagree.

**cluberti** · 20 Apr 2011

I'm not entirely sure I'd call the inbox defragmenter crap, and the Engineering Windows 7 blog from Steven Sinofski had some very interesting findings by Microsoft on how disk fragmentation affects performance, and the way the defragmenter in Windows 7 was redesigned to handle this reality:

Disk Defragmentation

Given Microsoft spends millions on research and gathers usage and tech data from millions of machines, their findings on things like this are usually a good practice to follow. I think I'd agree with ignatzatsonic as well - wanting to do something better than this long-term is probably more likely in folks with obsessive compulsive tendencies, and not based on any real world performance benefit in most scenarios.