Asus logic Defragger FTW ! ... I use it to double check other bundle ware defraggers like the one in Advanced System Care till I finally just turned the ASC one off cause Asus logic defragger was way better. A nice feature to the Aus Logic defragger is the "defrag and optimize" option. Cleans up the table much better.
Note that not using the inbox defrag.exe can (and, frankly, will) screw up the information in the ReadyBoot cache. This means that whilst you're OCPD tendencies are assuaged by moving all files sequentially on the disk, you are actually slowing down the boot and prefetch processes due to misses from the ReadyBoot cache needing to be serviced and files read in from the disk in a different location than it was previously (thus resulting in an additional seek and read head movement). Also, layout.ini (which stores this information) is not generated/updated every day (by default it's every 3), so it could be awhile before the system catches up with what the defrag program did.
It's not critical, but you should at least know all of the ramifications of what you're doing if you don't use a defragmenter that knows to update layout.ini (and how to do it). The only 3rd party defragmenter that updates layout.ini properly is PerfectDisk, and I have not seen any indication from others that they bother with this - it doesn't mean there aren't other 3rd party defragmenters that update layout.ini, but I have not seen any public indication or documentation on any other than PerfectDisk that this is done.
Have now switched after ten years to Puran Defrag, for it's Boot Time defragger which is the only way to defrag System Files which are running otherwise, and also for its Intelligent Optimizer you can enable on the Additional Operations tab which moves most-used apps to the outside of HD for quicker reads. This can speed up an older HD.
Last edited by gregrocker; 10 Oct 2011 at 22:16.
There is nothing wrong with the Windows 7 defragger. Microsoft has in-depth knowledge of OS and filesystems so know what they are doing, more so than third party I would guess. I have tried third party and always fall back to Microsoft - it works very well for me.
Note that not using the inbox defrag.exe can (and, frankly, will) screw up the information in the ReadyBoot cache. This means that whilst you're OCPD tendencies are assuaged by moving all files sequentially on the disk
It's not critical, but you should at least know all of the ramifications of what you're doing if you don't use a defragmenter that knows to update layout.ini (and how to do it). The only 3rd party defragmenter that updates layout.ini properly is PerfectDisk, and I have not seen any indication from others that they bother with this - it doesn't mean there aren't other 3rd party defragmenters that update layout.ini, but I have not seen any public indication or documentation on any other than PerfectDisk that this is done.
Couldn't have said it any better, Windows 7 is very complex and folks are kidding themselves if they think that these other programs will really be any better at actually increasing responsiveness in their system! Key word "actually".
Personally speaking the need for third party solutions with 7 is just a myth, they may improve some aspects of the drive performance, or worse conflict with Windows own routines, and any performance increase will be imperceptible to the average user on a standalone machine.
Differing algorithms just give varying results this is why you will always see more fragmentation when using third party solutions. A whole industry has grown up around this subject, and let`s face it if they all reported that Windows was now doing a good enough job it would hardly be in their best interests.
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I'm glad you posted the words "personally speaking", because your assertion is inherently wrong. Protected mode Microsoft OSes have always had issues in the file fragmentation area, and the problem is one of mainly philosophy. It has more to do with how the operating system keeps track of where files are stored than anything, but the fact that the address might suddenly change if the OS writes it back to disk elsewhere after reading it causes a lot of issues as well. They have been getting much better at this in recent years, but the company as a whole still has a huge problem with file fragmentation. In my opinion they should move to something like the Inode and Superblock paradigm to insure that files have a permanent home, as this nearly stops fragmentation altogether.
Worse yet, their defrag program stinks. But one must be fair. Only one defrag application I've used in thirty years made that much of an improvement. But since Norton went south with most of their applications, they seem to have tossed Speeddisk out with those they messed up. Now we're forced to put up with dog slow defragmenters that can't even manipulate a page file without rebooting.
That said, the Auslogic application works fine, but it's nothing special. I use Perfectdisk by Raxco myself, but I'm not happy with it. But at least it does complete the job, which is something the OS native application is dubious about.
My System Specs
There hasn't been a reason to a third-party defragger on Windows since Vista was released. On a typical desktop computer, the built-in defragger does the job quite well.
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