disk defragmentation and DisKeeper

[karlsnooks]

I was unaware that the disk defragrmenter in Win 7 is really a trimmed-down version of the defragmenter from DisKeeper.

I found this Microsoft Knowledge Base article interesting:
Third-party disk defragmenter tools for Windows

 

[bru]

Is that good or bad in your view? Any chance you will use it or will you stay with Auslogics?

After eight months I'm still at 0% fragmented according to Win 7. Not sure if that is because (as I understand it) the defragmenter constantly works in the background in addition to it's scheduled runs.

 

[legacy7955]

I'm subscribed to this thread I would also like to know what the answer is.


I too have 0% fragmentation after 9 months. Hard to believe unless the defrag utility is occasionally working in the background in addition to scheduled defrags ....


ANYONE KNOW THE NITTY GRITTY ON THIS?

 

[karlsnooks]

Win 7 will disable defragmentation for a solid state drive (SSD).

I do not use the Auslogics defragmenter.

I do use the Auslogics Registry Cleaner (and my system has not crashed and burned).

My defragmenter of choice is Contig.exe from the SysInternal's people.
Contig

To use contig:

Go to an elevated command prompt.
Go to the folder containing Contig.exe.

To learn about the contig command options, type
CONTIG /?

To defragment the D drive, type:
contig /s /v D:\*.*

after running contig and seeing what happens,
then next time you may want to use:
contig /s /q D:\*.*

This will be faster since you have now chosen "quiet" mode as opposed to "verbose" mode.

To only "analyze", but not actually defrag, then:
contig /s /v /a d:\*.*

You also run contig twice, right behind each other to get a couple more files defragged (if contig indicated that some were still not defragged).

 

[Stratos]

Personally on machines using normal HDD's (not SSD's), I prefer to use Defraggler from Piriform. You can find it at Defraggler - Download

Take a good look at that page and look below where it says "Huge thanks to those of you who have already contributed and support our software! You can still donate here."

You'll see 2 links, one from Filehippo, the other from Piriform. You can download it for free at any of those 2 links.

What makes Defraggler different is that other than offering you a Quick and Normal Defrag option, it also allows you the option to allow it to move larger files (which you can determine in the options) to the outside of the hard drive. When a hard drive rotates, the outer edges of each platter spins faster than the inner sections of the disc, so it makes sense to keep the bigger files to the outside so that loads faster.

 

[GeneO]

I think that KB article is dated, It is certainly true that XP, Windows NT and 2000 defraggers were based on Diskeeper, but I don't think Windows 7 is. I believe Windows 7 is all Microsoft.

I believe deffragler is not VSS aware, which can play havoc on your shadow storage.

 

[karlsnooks]

You will find the link that I gave in the original post informative.

Although I use Contig, Defraggler is safe to use.

 

[GeneO]

You will find the link that I gave in the original post informative.

Although I use Contig, Defraggler is safe to use.

Using defraggler will eat up your system restore point shadow space. It is not VSS aware and the OS will interpret the movement of disk blocks by defraggler as modifying the associated files and will replicate the blocks, eating up the allocated restore space with the end result of loosing restore points. If you don't care about restore points this is not an issue. If you do it is.

The Windows 7 defragmenter is superior and optimizes defragmentation to minimally affect volume shadow copies and optimizing MFT fragmentation etc. Why would you use some third party defragmenter like defraggler rather than the Windows defragmentwer?

And the original link you posted is not relavant to Windows 7 AFAIK.

 

[Bill2]

I think that KB article is dated, It is certainly true that XP, Windows NT and 2000 defraggers were based on Diskeeper, but I don't think Windows 7 is. I believe Windows 7 is all Microsoft.

Correct. The defragmenter that came built-in with Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003 is a pared-down version of Diskeeper.

 

[karlsnooks]

If the information is NOT correct, then someone needs to talk to Microsoft.

Please read the article referenced by the link.

Please note the last revision date.

Please note the "Applies to" section.

 

[GeneO]

If the information is NOT correct, then someone needs to talk to Microsoft.

Please read the article referenced by the link.

Please note the last revision date.

Please note the "Applies to" section.

They implied in thee article what versions of the OS it applied to. Don't go by the review (not revision) date - from what I have observed it is meaningless.

You are correct, they need to be more clear. Usually MS explicitly says what OS and versions the KB article applies to, sometimes they are not so clear.

 

[karlsnooks]

To me the Applies To section and the revision date is extremely clear.

Maybe someone would like to post a question with the DisKeeeper folks regarding the accuracy of this Microsoft KB article.

For me the question is merely academic as I use CONFIG.

 

[GeneO]

Well I could be wrong about tyhe diskeeper hritage of Windows 7

 

[karlsnooks]

and I could be wrong. That has been known to happen.

 

[maxseven]

Using defraggler will eat up your system restore point shadow space. It is not VSS aware...

I wonder if you can elaborate on this? It seems to me Defraggler is touted by Piriform as being "perfectly safe, uses Windows file copy methods blah blah" and I don't recall any caveats in there.

I like Restore Points myself; they've saved my bunions more than once. But I've had them become corrupted once in a while. So now I can add Defraggler to my list of programs that can hose them-up, along with a couple of Uninstaller programs I've tried?

 

[GeneO]

Using defraggler will eat up your system restore point shadow space. It is not VSS aware...

I wonder if you can elaborate on this? It seems to me Defraggler is touted by Piriform as being "perfectly safe, uses Windows file copy methods blah blah" and I don't recall any caveats in there.

I like Restore Points myself; they've saved my bunions more than once. But I've had them become corrupted once in a while. So now I can add Defraggler to my list of programs that can hose them-up, along with a couple of Uninstaller programs I've tried?

Lost free space after aborting defragment - Piriform Community Forums

Features of the Windows Vista hard disk defragmentation utility

 

[GeneO]

Using defraggler will eat up your system restore point shadow space. It is not VSS aware...

I wonder if you can elaborate on this? It seems to me Defraggler is touted by Piriform as being "perfectly safe, uses Windows file copy methods blah blah" and I don't recall any caveats in there.

I like Restore Points myself; they've saved my bunions more than once. But I've had them become corrupted once in a while. So now I can add Defraggler to my list of programs that can hose them-up, along with a couple of Uninstaller programs I've tried?

Defraggler - Windows Vista and volume shadow copies

Lost free space after aborting defragment - Piriform Community Forums

Features of the Windows Vista hard disk defragmentation utility

 

[karlsnooks]

gene,
For Windows Vista, then one must be cautious.

I have posted a question in their forum re Defraggler and Win 7. I have not received an answer.

If you can get a direct answer from Piriform directly on this matter, then I'd be grateful.

As said for Vista, true, but I've not found a statement re Win 7.

 

[Wishmaster]

I remember reading back with Vista that Diskeeper was the same as MS defragger but with many more features and enhancements.
Although, I didn't put much wieght into it.


I know we all have our own opinion and prefrences, but I do think 3rd party defragmenters do a better job overall.

But, I've always found Raxco's PerfectDisc to be just right for my needs and prefer it over Diskeeper.
Plus its MS certified & a gold partner which is a good thing IMHO.
It also manages SSDs with a optimize feature, but Diskeeper also has a similar feature.


But to be completely fair, I tried out PD and Diskeeper a long time ago. Ended up choosing PD and have stuck with them, ever since.
So my experience with other defrag software is very limited.

 

[maxseven]

This is all pretty mysterious, and frankly appalling if MS Defrag itself has potential to destroy Restore Points--a lot of people (myself included) rely on these. I think in the Piriform forum was referred http://support.microsoft.com/kb/312067 wherein is stated the following:

The System Shadow Copy provider uses a copy-on-write mechanism that operates at a 16-KB block level. This is independent of the file system's cluster allocation unit size. If the file system's cluster size is smaller than 16 KB, the System Shadow Copy provider cannot easily determine that disk defragmentation I/O is different from typical write I/O, and performs a copy-on-write operation. This might cause the Shadow Copy storage area to grow very quickly. If the storage area reaches its user-defined limit, the oldest shadow copies are deleted first

It's from 2007, and at top it says "may not apply to your OS" (W7 running here).

So I'm not sure what to think about all this because it seems that if the simple solution were to stop the Volume Shadow Copy service, run the defrag, then restart VSCS, well Piriform would have incorporated this already?

EDIT: Oops here's another quote about Vista (VSS aware):

In shadow-copy-aware defragmentation, defragmentation uses Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) in-box software to optimize defragmentation. The VSS software minimizes copy-on-write change blocks. Shadow-copy-aware optimization slows down filling the difference area. This kind of optimization also slows down the reclaiming of old snapshots during defragmentation.

So maybe this is not so mysterious after all, unless Piriform hasn't figured this out yet.