How so?

my vote goes to Diskeeper!



try www.softpedia.com there might be domos of these... but i always get mine from a special source

mine, the perfect degragger would be PERFECT DISK 7.... the best.

Well, after reading about 90% of these posts, and after trying Perfect Disk, I gotta say I love it!
Does a superb job in defragmenting, i just gotta give the offline files defrag a try!

Got a question, for those of you who have got it, I am going to buy it this weekend, so was wondering if it is worth getting the upgrade protection? just over £5 for a year, to get any release within the next year free...how likely are they in releasing another version within the next year?

isn't this poll and topic a bit useless? a Defragmenter can be tested by objective methods and has been tested, for as far as I know, Perfectdisk was the winner.


(whuaa sorry for the double thing* )

I totally agree.
I totally agree.

Indeed...check the PerfectDisk website for their latest comparison with Diskeeper 10. Having read this I wonder what's in those 40 something MB Diskeeper eats of disk space - definitely no efficent defragmenting engine but lots of fancy colors and windows style bloat. As for O&O, there exists a similar comparison which makes it look equally infantile.

Ok, I just read that PDF file. Diskeeper 10 absolutely sucks compared to PD7. I'm glad I'm in the right boat.

wait your reading pdf on perfectdisks website and concluding its the best? thats a surprise

PD is very good, however I think O&O does a better job. thats my humble opinion.

Dig, by experience, everytime I've defragged a driver with PD, several PCs, several drives, regardless of how many file fragments are present, after the defrag, the number of fragged files is 0, with the files, system files, metadata and page file. So how you can get any better than a perfectly defragged drive... is absolutely beyond me. why bother with anything else if you already have the best. I think sometimes people pay no attention to the actual ability of a program and focus entirely on "this guy doesn't use what I use so let's keep the thread rolling with pointless posts". If you wanna use OO, go right ahead. Like I said, I know which boat takes me to shore.

I've tried SpeeDefrag 3.0 recently on an XP system (don't run on Win2k) and I like it.

It's free and it does the defrag when system is not running and then shuts computer down when you're done. So you can set it once a month, let it work and not worry about leaving computer on all night. Works pretty good too.

Not to burst anyone's bubble, but in retrospect, the solitary goal of defragmentation is and always will be the same... and as long as we all arrive at the same conclusion, who could honestly care what or how the application derrives this conclusion?

Let's look at it mathematically:

4(2 + 6) will always equal 32, despite whether we distribute 4 into the parentheses and then add, or add what's in the parentheses and then multiply by 4.


Now, if we conclude that no matter what application we use, we will always end up with a drive with no fragmentation, we can deduce that:

- Application X, Y, and Z essentially perform exactly the same function(albeit faster) as the built in Windows defragmenter

- Spending money on said applications is as frivolous as spending money on anti-virus "suites"(definitely the correct nomenclature for them, considering how roomy they become on your hard drive and how well they cozy up to Windows) such as Norton, when there are free applications like ClamWin and Anti-Vir that won't gobble your memory

- If application X, Y, or Z occupy more than a few megabytes and are spread over numerous files and directories, the likelihood of X, Y, or Z becoming fragmented themselves increases tenfold.

Thus, we run into a redundancy issue: if the application is defragmenting itself(specifically, the fragmented clusters it occupies on the drive), it's essentially wasting time... time you originally thought you were saving by buying the application in the first place.


So, in conclusion, the best defragmentation application is one that:

- Can perform the task efficiently and effectively
- Is priced relative to the cost of the tool included with Windows
- Occupies as few clusters as possible


In my experience, the tool that best fits this description is none other than Contig, coupled with the Power Defragmenter GUI(www.excessive-software.eu.tt).

Sure, the GUI might not be very attractive(it's simply a shell for Contig), but because it does two-pass defragmentation, it virtually performs exactly the same task as Perfect Disk or O&O in a relatively short(er) amount of time, all while keeping a profile under 2MB.

Well, of course the defragmenter will be fragmented when it is initially installed on the harddrive because all files are at that point. I don't think any files are written to the disk as full chunks in Windows.

Absolutely bogus, because the time it takes to defrag a few MBs about 1.0 - 1.5 seconds.


PerfectDisk defrags more efficiently and effectively than any other defragmenter I've used. The tool included with Windows comes with Windows so it is free, but it doesn't defrag as E&E as PD, dunno about others.


I'm with you on the GUI part, not as important as the functionality and other aspects. Diskeeper does a 3-pass or so and PerfectDisk did better after 1-pass. Under 2 MB. The filesize isn't so important to me in this case. PD installer is 3.3 MB and the Program Files are 11MB. That's fine for me. Being of as little filesize as possible is not a key factor for it to be a good defagmenter.

Yes, but you see, this is where we run into a quandry... should a defragmenter occupy enough clusters where it needs to perform gratuitous maintenance on its own files?

This makes sense with antivirus software, because it allows them to be self-healing... but I don't see the point with defragmentation tools.

Provided you use my reference to "time" as a relative unit of measure, I can see where you come from. However, in order for time to be relative, it must not only be quantifiable in a sense of duration, but also in human value. I can't speak for everyone, so while a second or two(per cluster, mind you) might not seem significant in duration or value, for the sake of argument let's treat time as a quasi-unit of measure:

If total time is equal to time per megabyte multiplied by the amount of space the files occupy, and there are 10-20 more files on a partition with the aforementioned "defragmentation suites" installed, then naturally total time will increase with some degree of proportion to the amount of additional space these tools occupy.

Granted, because these defragmentation tools are faster than our base of reference(Windows Defragmenter), this all becomes irrelevant when the application is actually running.

However, if you look at it in retrospect, larger defragmentation applications do add unnecessary time to the equation, which is simply what my argument was about.




If the end result is the same no matter what tool you use, how do you gauge efficiency?

If it's time of completion, then I hate to break it to you, but PerfectDisk and O&O only manage to shave off a quarter of the time it takes for Windows' defragmentation tool to complete.

I've observed Contig doing two-pass defragmentation completing in almost half the time.



You also fail to mention that both PerfectDisk and O&O mandate that their background services be running in order to even access basic defragmentation functionality out of the applications.

To me, this seems unnecessary, considering Windows XP already runs its defragmentation tool in the background when your system is idle(Note: if you're using a defragmentation mode that sorts the files on the drive in order of precedence[ie; the Windows directory first, applications next, etc], then I would disable idle defragmentation, as Windows tends to ruin this type of sorting).

I don't know about you, but the only time I run my defragmentation tool is when I decide it's time to defragment the system(usually after installations/uninstallations, cleaning temp folders, Torrent download completions).

As far as file size is concerned, you shouldn't be solely concerned with its occupancy in reference to that, but also in reference to where these files are. I'm almost certain that both PD and O&O install additional DLLs in the Windows directory, which tends to make the directory ugly if you have numerous other applications doing exactly the same thing.

Furthermore, both defragmentation tools install hundreds of registry entries, which again, is totally unnecessary for a tool that's supposed to be promoting cluster organization.

well as i said above i use O&O but i have tried PD7. I 'unpacked' the msi's for both using uniextract so i can better see whats being installed and where. imo they're both light enough for me and a mb or two doesnt matter much. I think the argument about the program having to defrag itself is silly in this respect. The same is true for speed, i havent seen any objective tests, and all ive heard is users complaining about differences in the ms, which is probably just user perception until proven otherwise.

I tried contig and the frontend for it and its a good free solution, but these other programs are easier to use, have more options, and a nice UI.

However I would agree that i dislike the dependancies and need to install drivers and run as a service. but the nice thing about MSI's is they uninstall very well

It's become my understanding that for the typical user, an application that has tons of features(most of which remain unused) is usually contradictory to usability.

How often does the average joe actually need to connect to a remote computer and defragment its drives using an application installed locally?




The problem, however, is that uninstalling the application is not an option for those who want to use it. So, if you do want to use it, you're either left to keeping the dependencies and drivers loaded, or activating them manually everytime you want to run the application.

Furthermore, upon observation of your sig, the applications you list promote the "modular" or "tinyapps" model of computing, so I don't understand how you're able to appreciate/tolerate applications like O&O, PD, and I'm assuming Norton or McAfee as well.

please i know better than to use norton, that was insulting, ive been warning people about that poor software for (about 5-6) years. Use ClamWin, Nod32, or BitDefender. In fact i use no antivirus, because i dont get viruses

To be honest, on my pc i have no programs installed except some hardware drivers and winrar, seriously. i only occasionally defrag, prob every other month, and its never that bad anyway because i use extended partitions and store most of my stuff on a dedicated fileserver here.

I usually roll back my 'system partition' (C:) around the same time using Acronis True Image (which takes less than 2 minutes) thus effectively uninstalling O&O or whatever else. So installing O&O for like an hour and then 'undoing' it, doesnt bother me the least.

I would not use O&O if i did not believe it does a better job than Config and PD. I like the defrag options: Name for my system partition, and Space for my 'bloated' data and program partitions. I would need to hear evidence contrary that proves that O&O is less or equally effective, before i drop it.

Okay, I stand corrected. I'll give credit where credit is due.




Allow me to reiterate: My argument is not based on the fact that X application is any more efficient or effective than Y application, because the fact of the matter is, unless X or Y is less effective or efficient than our base of reference(Windows Defragmenter), they are, in essence, as effective and efficient as they're going to get.

As far as I'm concerned, we're comparing apples to apples.

However, the point I'm stressing is that it's frivolous to eat the much larger apple Y if a smaller apple X will satisfy your hunger just as easily, because what isn't used isn't necessary, which means it's simply wasteful.

I am sorry I do not understand. Your saying X or Y applications cannot be more effective than Windows Defragmenter?

I forgot to mention before that i also remove that with nLite.

I eat pretty healthy and when I feel full, I stop eating. When I feel hungry again, I try and find something to eat. Judging by the way this discussion is going, I assume you consider yourself fairly intellectual and are confident in the choices you make. Since you like Contig for the reasons you've stated, and I like another defragmenter, you think that your "apple" would satify my "hunger" just as much as PerfectDisk would. Well, I consider this another one of those "shove your opinion/belief/preference down the other person's throat" attempts. As for your concerns about time, I defrag my drives every 2 weeks at least, once a month at most. I usually do this overnight or when I'm spending time with my gf or watching TV/movie. So time doesn't really concern me. The more fragmented the harddrive is, the longer it is going to take. Consider PD has SmartPlacement and Free Space Consolidation, it has to spend even more time making things as organized as possible. This is something I've come to appreciate from PD.
Having said all that, I'm happy with my preference and nothing you can say will change my mind. I'm used to it and love it and recommend it to others. That's all there is to it.
Take a HD, install 20 programs, use them to create 3 files per program, then uninstall all the programs. Do this once per defragmenter tool and tell us all which one results in 0 fragments at the end.

I am not really a big fan of the metaphors and analogies with food.

@Jeremy I dont think anyone is trying to shove anything down anyones throat. Lets not stifle discussion.

As for having 0 fragments after a defrag, thats not exclusive to PD, I know O&O always fully defrags - i dont see anything special here.

Everyone has a right to their own opinion. One thing i don't see is any technical information from an objective source about the relative effectiveness of these programs.

btw I want to thank teqguy for informing me about Config. I use other sysinternals apps, i overlooked that one.



@oOTNTOo heres link to download a 30 day trial of both. they are the same price btw.
PerfectDisk http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/Perfe...sk/1019208780/1
O&O http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/OO_De...nal/995525249/2

Just saying it how I perceived it. Nothing stifled about that. Anyway, glad this discussion is over. I'm tired of it, honestly.

Jeremy, if you were personally offended by my opinion, I apologize.

However, I must reiterate my point: Windows does not differentiate between defragmentation tools, despite the user's preference. This is why fancy GUIs and special features are ultimately negligible.

@teqguy what do you mean by "Windows does not differentiate between defragmentation tools"? Can you try to explain that better, sorry I am not understanding your point.

From what i read Contig defrags files on an individual basis, unlike a 'disk defrager', it does not 'intelligently sort' files on the disk.

What I mean is that despite what tool you use, defragmentation always has the same result: the files are no longer fragmented. Therefore, the software and hardware are completely complacent with a tool like Windows Defragmenter.

Now, as far as "smart sorting" is concerned, I find it to be a marketing gimmick. Why?

Well, if you partition your drive so that the operating system(and only the operating system) occupies the first partition, you not only accomplish what sorting aims to accomplish, but you also ensure that your operating system remains fairly unfragmented, thereby eliminating the need for such a tool in the first place.


I could enlighten you on similar partitioning strategies that take this a step further, but I believe this isn't the thread for that.

ok i understand your point, and i mostly agree with you.

As for partitioning i have setup winnt.sif before to put systemdrive on C program files on D and Documents and Settings on E. I went back to the default with everything on C, and then I install certain apps to D and use TweakUI to move special folder like 'My Documents' to the D partition. I moved to this method once i started using AcronisTI.

What do you do different?

By the way I found another software thats alot like O&O but it doesnt touch the system folders and its much lighter (1.5mb in %PF% and the service uses around 500kb ram). Seems to work just as good too.
http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/mst_D...me/1097087166/1

My best partitioning experiment took it slightly a step further...

I had the OS spread over two drives(the system and system32 folders occupied one partition, and the rest of the operating system files occupied the other), a partition for documents and settings, one for applications, one for temporary files, and one solely for the pagefile.

The result was undeniably worth the work, with everything staying neat and tidy, although it definitely isn't practical for most. I was unable to determine whether or not Windows actually booted faster, but it definitely seemed like it.

My next endeavor will also include a high speed CF card set to read only mode, which I'll put the system and system32 folders on. This should not only reduce boot times, but also protect the system against pesky spyware and viruses.


I checked out that defragmentation tool, but was immediately dissuaded from it, simply because it's not freeware.

SmartPlacement is not a marketing gimmick. You can either just defragment the files and leave them where they are, or actually place them in certain order from the beginning of the disk outward, depending on how often they are accessed. If you even used PD, you'd see the visual display of the data and the difference between normal and SmartPlacement.
You're getting too wrapped up in this whole discussion, I think. Also, I think you need to actually use all the software before continuing because it seems like you're trying to tell me how Italy smells and tastes without actually going to Italy.

Actually, I have PerfectDisk, Diskeeper, and O&O installed... and out of the three, the only one that sparked any interest was Diskeeper.

Why? Less resource usage. However, in that light, they all pale in comparison to contig.

Furthermore, I don't believe you have the right to make conjectures about me based solely on my opinions... that's called prejudice.

Low resource usage, big deal. I have 2 GBs of Dual Channel, you think I'm worried about resources? I have less than 20 processes running at any given time.
Prejudice? You can be black, green, blue, orange, multi-colored and have 4 horns and a tail for all I care.
But when you say you think SmartPlacement is a marketing gimmick, but yet you say you have PD installed, which verifies visually that the files are placed intelligently as opposed to typical defragmentation, just doesn't seem too bright... (your reasoning, not your intelligence).

what is it with being unable to resist replying to these threads?

well, to be honest, i like diskeeper, i like it a lot, also, i think its better suited for novices, as it can be set up automatically, and you don't even know its there, it just does its job, its great, it even gives you little cool maps of the drive and tells you all these cool statistics

well, now i can remember back when we all used windows 95 and all the !!!111!!!111 talk was to people who refused to leave win 3.11 and just insisted win 3.11 plus win32's was exactly the same as win95...or something, anywho i remember back then norten made a very good defrag utility, (i'm sure it was norten? before they became all bloated?) anywho, i also remember when you run that, you actually noticed a difference, boot times seemed faster, opening explorer the files seem to wizz up quicker than before, it actually seemed to do something, moving on...

...for the last few years i have trusted diskeepers pretty maps, why shouldn't i, they appear to be making a huuuuuge difference, although i could never feel an improvement no matter how badly fragmented the drive was, after running diskeeper, i never noticed a difference.

I never questioned the fact they kept bringing out version after a version, i did wonder what do they do to keep improving it, i mean, what possibly could of changed to make it go from 7 to 8 9 10 etc, but after doing a few tests i discovered perfect disk seems to do a far better job, i'm not to bothered if neither of them can get 0 fragmented files afterwards, but what does interest me is when you notice a difference, until i used perfect disk i always assumed drives were just to fast to notice a difference, but after i run that i noticed windows seemed to start quicker, and again with explorer files list quicker too, so to me, perfect disk is the the best one, however, i feel diskeeper is overall a more usable program, but if you don't mind the amount of time it takes perfect disk is the answer!

also i've never heard of contig but i'm gonna hav a look on google now..

As for usability, being any easier than opening it, selecting drive, clicking the button and specifying whether to just defrag or place intelligently, and then go to a friend's house for example, dunno how easier it can get than that.

true it is easy to use!

but i find as the diskeeper is, well basically the same interface as the windows one, i feel its easier, plus i like the idea of how it can defrag in the background, or when the computer is idle, i'd really like an option like that for perfect disk! i'm guessing it wouldn't be as effective then tho.

after looking up that contig one, i'm not sure how that can be the best, doesn't seem like a defragger to me, just a file defragger?

I feel the perfect disk is most thorough when it comes to optimisation and that's what matters to me.

Just for everyone's reference, the Windows Defragmenter:

a ) Does not run on its own in the background. It will defragment and re-allocate files associated with the Windows Prefetcher from time to time, but it will not automatically defragment all of your hard drives automatically. This is one of the new features that Microsoft stated it would try to include in Vista.

b ) Deal with any sort of intelligent file placement unlike PD, DK, or O&O. It'll just try to make the files whole again. If there isn't enough space for the file, then it just moves on to the next one.

c ) Does not give very good information about what it's doing. A proper GUI will give you some information about what's going on. That's why it's called a Graphical User Interface - it allows you to interface with the program and extract information.

d ) Does not do a good job! I remember that I once had a "temp" drive where I used to just copy everything, from CDs, the internet, my downloads, etc etc etc - 20 GB of stuff. I had forgotten to run the Windows defragger on it (this was before I had heard of PD or DK or O&O). So I ran it... before defragmentation - 33% fragmented, after - 22% defragmented. I figured "It might need another go", so I ran it again - 22% fragmented after again... and again... and again. I ended up copy all the files to CD (I didn't have a DVD-burner back then), and then formatting the drive!




Also, the argument about continuously needing to defragment itself... how would the files related to the program become fragmented again? Sure, the first time, you need to defrag another 15MB or so of files. For me, that's 0.1% of my hard drive space - not a significant amount. Unless they were modified, overwritten, or changed in any other way, they'll stay right where they are. Fragmentation only occurs when files are created or changed - not read.




As for your defragmentation habits, sure that's fine, but ask the average user (i.e. anyone on the street) if they would rather deal with defragging themselves, or use 1-2% of their RAM to have the system take care of itself. The single largest selling point with most maintenance/security software is the "automatic" part - i.e. you don't have to do anything. If you're nit-picky about 5MB of RAM, then you should really re-think about how modern computers and operating systems work (I'll give you a hint - caches, caches, and more caches - it's all in memory).


I've got PerfectDisk on my laptop, and Diskeeper on my desktop at home. Reason I use those two and not the same? The one feature that Diskeeper has that PD doesn't - "Set it and Forget it". I've never once had to manually run fragmentation on my desktop at home since I installed Diskeeper. The concept of scheduling seems a bit odd to me, since there's not much point in defragging EVERY week if the system files haven't changed. If PerfectDisk came out with a similar feature, I'd install it at home in an instant. On my laptop however, I only run PerfectDisk every 3-4 weeks. My files don't change that much, and after enough time spend infront of this 15.4" screen, I've got enough of a "feel" for when it's time to defrag.


Whatever you use will probably do the job for you. If one is "better" than the other - I have yet to find a completely unbiased third-party real-world test to prove this. For the record, Raxco should be ashamed of letting that system get over 100,000 fragmented files. The whole point of a defragmenter is to keep things in check. Diskeeper's methods are completely different from PerfectDisk - an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. If they can keep fragmentation at bay by doing several lightweight passes, then it's just as good (if not incrementally better) than doing one big-a** "here's everything" pass that PerfectDisk does.



As for time spent - the defrag tools will ALL take time to scan over your files - fragmented or not. If the disk has already been defragmented with PD or O&O or whatever else, what beneficial information can you get from the time taken to run a seemingly useless defrag pass with the Windows built in defragmenter. Unless one program takes significantly longer than another, there probably isn't much point in dealing with this.



By the way, I didn't mean this post as a personal attack, but just as a different point of view on the subject. I really don't see any reason to tell someone that they're wrong for using a particular program. I'd just like to get most of the facts straight so that people have the ability to make an informed decision.



Oh how I wish, I wish, I wish that I could install Windows on ReiserFS...

I apologize for not being able to reply earlier, but the place at which I was staying for the weekend had done a major overhaul on their LAN... result being no connection on every floor but the first .


To answer your question, contig is merely a console based application that accepts one argument- namely a file. You are correct in that without passing additional switches to contig, it will only defrag the file you tell it to. However, contig features a switch that allows it to do recursion on a subdirectory, which, if you were to type "contig -s C:", would licit the entire defragmentation of your hard drive.

Now, to turn contig into a full-fledged defragmentation tool, all you have to have is a shell that will pass it these arguments. This is where Power Defragmenter GUI comes in: excessive-software.eu.tt. With that and contig in the same directory, open Power Defragmenter, then select "Power Defrag" mode.


While Windows Defragmenter itself does not run in the background, it can be sufficed to say that, in essence, the portion of code that does run acts both complementary and partially supplementary to other defragmentation tools.

It was my mistake to imply that it did anything superlative to that. However, there aren't any other defragmentation tools that handle Windows' prefetching, so I wouldn't discredit that portion of the tool.




Forgive me for summarizing, but I'd like to reaffirm the fact that nowhere was it mentioned that Windows Defragmenter performs well or is even adequate for the job. It was simply used as a base of reference for comparison with other tools.

To make my opinion clear, I do agree that Windows Defragmenter is another one of Microsoft's sorry attempts to provide a "one OS fits all" solution, but I don't turn my nose at the fact that it is a defragmentation tool nonetheless.

The problem is that these tools don't know whether or not a file is fragmented until they actually do a pass over it.

Granted, I don't believe this to be too taxing, considering my drive consists of hundreds of files defragmentation tools absolutely hate- namely, video files and large archives . However, I was simply making this point for the sake of argument(note that I called it a quandry, not a passage in my personal bible).

To address this point more thoroughly, though, I don't believe current defragmentation tools are doing all they should be. Specifically, they should be taking advantage of Windows' built in Indexing Service to find out if a file is fragmented or not, and then proceed accordingly.

Although, the same can't be said for anti-virus tools, as I find it hard to trust Windows in aiding in the security of itself.




Let me start out by asking you to re-evaluate who exactly our target audience is, because I honestly believe we aren't reaching the "average joe" via the MSFN forums. Most of the people on this forum are knowledgeable and aware of their computing habits. They also seem to realize that working with computers is a give and take relationship; ie: what you put into it is what you get back from it.

Now, about the so-called "average joe"...

I am now under the impression that they would enjoy their life being completely automated. I find this greatly disturbing and completely unacceptable.

The modern average joe has grown to depend on such automation so much that they've become over zealous lemmings(not to include politics, but this is especially true in the US), adept at clicking "OK" to every message box that pops up and opening e-mail attachments from unknown addresses.

Based on the worst past few viruses and spyware, most of which could've been averted had said "average joe" not accepted what was default or automated and actually bothered to pay attention to what they were doing before they did it.

And you think they should have more automation? If that's the case, they might as well just have one of those little birds that works on buoyancy.

It worked for Homer.


(Note: I am in no way trying to hold contention in order to offend anyone, but I honestly believe that on a forum where people come to modify Windows so that it's sleek, smaller, and faster, they would appreciate having as few background tasks as possible in order to ensure optimal performance)




While EXT2 isn't as efficient as Reiser, you might want to check out this kernel mode driver for Windows, as it offers full support for EXT2 in Windows:

fs-driver.org

Teqguy, you remind me a lot of that Mastertech guy. The magic word started with "P" and ended with "H". Everyone, shush. LMAO
Good points, though.

How so?

Assuming you're talking about his Firefox bashing, Mastertech's basis of argument is supported by one silly website, and while that website does have a few decent points, I don't believe it's worth debating.

While I find hardware debating(or flaming, if you will) completely pointless, I understand that it is partially valid, in that the only leg those people have to stand on is that there is some degree of pressure put on the decision of what hardware to buy. Software, on the other hand, is an entirely different animal... it's fairly simple to develop a preference, because you can always try before you buy.

However, to surmise my opinion on both would be this: Current software and hardware do more butting of heads than working together. The most feasible way to relieve this is either get better hardware, get better software, or when time and money persists, both.

Both Zxian and you commented on resource usage being superfluous, due to the fact that you have large amounts of RAM. My question to both of you is this: Would you still need that much memory if hard drives could keep pace with system memory? What about if applications were more efficient?

Furthermore, if you don't absolutely need a certain application running in the background at all times, why keep it there? Windows' scheduler does a decent job at allowing you to perform all of your system maintenance at a desired time. This would give you the automation you find useful, while not needlessly sucking up resources during downtime.

When it comes to computers, I don't do things based on how things aren't. Applications aren't more efficient. Thankfully, the biggest step we can do to getting the most out of our RAM, is by nLiting Windows.

Hence, nLite. As for normal everyday applications, msconfig (strun.exe from Nirsoft for me). Services? services.msc (or serviwin from Nirsoft for me). We're getting off-topic, by the way.

As I said before, I have less than 20 processes running at any given time (with the exception of gaming). If you have 512MBs of RAM and have 20 programs installed, I can obviously understand why you might do things differently than myself. I like to be in complete control of which programs are running and when they are running, so no scripts or automation for me.

So, I take it that everytime you want to run Perfect Disk, you have to manually re-enable the scheduler and engine services that come with it?

If so, we're getting down to the meat and potatoes(don't worry, no food analogies this time) of my argument. Having to enable these services everytime I wanted to defrag is what killed the whole experience of using defragmentation "suites" for me, especially considering I get the same results with contig.

No, actually, I set both of them to Manual and the program runs when I open it.

I've come up with a great solution that helps alot against fragmentation.

That is, convert drives to dynamic ones, and then create partitions that you mount in folders that you use for different stuff...

This is my setup:

C: (10GB partition for system, drivers and such) - Not striped

C:\Games (80GB partition for installed games) - Striped over 3 disks

C:\Program Files (40GB partition for installed programs) - Striped over 3 disks

D: (250GB partition I use to store my documents, ftp and other stuff that doesn't need to be defragmented very often) - Striped over 3 disks

S: (3GB partition for swap and temporary only) - Striped over 3 disks

The only partitions that really needs to be defragmented is C:, C:\Games and S:, all the others doesn't get fragmented alot and/or don't need to be defragmented.

But this doesn't stop the system becoming bogged down (Windows have always been like this!!) So when it happends I just refortmat C: - use my nLited installation (install takes about 15 minutes) and just mount all the partitions to the right folders again reinstallation of most software goes really fast since all the files already exists and thus, installation just skip them.

This means I won't loose any critical data (exept your current desktop, I am thinking about mounting the desktop folder into it's own partition as well, but it might be overkill!), since it's stored on different partitions... So I can reformat with ease!

I also use striped partitions over 3 drives, which is very easy when you have dynamic drives.
Even if my computer have crashed once in a while (due to OC:ing and bad drivers), and that I've reformatted about 6 times; I use the same striped partitions. They are still healthy and have never failed! So I must say that software striping is alot safer and stable than hardware striping, but software striping may eat cpu during hdd read/write-intensive tasks, and doesn't give the same performance boost, but it's cheaper and easier!

Best regards,

Menion

That works too.

It might be nice to take it a step further and write a batch script that automatically kills them when the application closes, but I guess manually closing them would suffice.



Menion, a solution similar to that has already been mentioned, but I'm interested in dynamic partitions. Enlighten us please.

Ending them in Task Manager only takes a few seconds, I'm not that lazy.

@teqguy - Ever heard of a guy called John Nash? He basically just said exactly what you did, only from an economics point of view. Companies could drive prices up if they worked together. In terms of quality, the same should hold (if everyone is nice and worked together). Unfortunately this just isn't how the world works.

As for the large amounts of RAM... I've installed Diskeeper on my girlfriend's parents computer (which only has 128MB of RAM), and it runs just fine for them. The 5% of RAM usage so that they don't have to worry is completely acceptable by their and my standards. Don't try to tell me that I should teach them how to use their computers because it's simply not worth my time or theirs. Give them a system that works and takes care of itself, and they'll be happy for years to come. Sure it's not a gaming system like Jeremy's or ripken's, or a mobile workstation like my laptop, but it does what they need it to - surf the web, check e-mail, write documents, etc etc etc. They don't need anything more.

As for keeping an application running in the background, if you've got the resources (i.e. you don't notice it during your average use), why NOT keep it running? That way, it's there when you need it and startup time is zero. Let's take Photoshop as an example. If you could keep Photoshop loaded into memory without any downside (which would be hard on just about any system), why wouldn't you? It would keep you from waiting 20 seconds each time you wanted to used it. If I could have every program I use loaded into memory with no downside, I'd take it. There's always the axiom - unused RAM is wasted RAM. If Windows XP wasn't as smart as it is with memory caching, then you'd definately notice things slowing down when you keep closing and opening programs.

All these "what if" comments are somewhat off-base, since that's simply not how things work! We have disk defragmenters because we're dealing with physical hard drives, not flash memory or RAM or whatever else. Hard drives are still miles slower than RAM, and for the next few years at least, they will be.

I understand where you're coming from. However, accepting things for what they are denies the very essence of humanity.

To try to tone this discussion down a little, I'll comment on one line of your post and nothing more:



Well, what if you do, in fact, have tasks that need a tremendous amount of memory?

As I'm sure you're aware, encoding, rendering, and games aren't exactly light on resources.

There is never an instance where I can't find RAM to devote to a process. For example, during encoding tasks, I use my memory as a ramdrive, which is immensely faster than a hard drive.

This is a good point if you're a spiritual advisor bringing people to Enlightenment, but when it comes to defragmentation software, it has nothing to do with religion or spirituality or whatever. You're dragging this way out of context. When it comes to the industry and the software that comes out of an industry, you just can't cry about how things should be, you have to bloody deal with how they are.

Actually, the concept of striving for some sort of pinnacle transcends any specific forum(Why else do we upgrade?), as it just so happens to be the basic principle of Darwinism.



"Dealing with things as they currently are" is accepting that they will always(or at least for a very long, indefinite amount of time) be that way. This is what brings about conformity and makes new concepts and ideas dwindle.

To get back on topic, though, the way I "deal" with current software is that I don't use anything that can be deemed "bloatware". IMO, any defragmentation suite that has more lines of code devoted to GUI than to defragmentation is what I would consider bloat.

If what I call bloat, you call "features", that's absolutely fine... I was simply trying to introduce an alternative utility, because as this forum has demonstrated, there isn't software that suits everyone.

theory: if we use software to create virtual ram disks, and run apps that like to page alot in that, then fragmentation would be minimal. what do you think?

I just have a vbs script that use Windows built in defrag and have been happy with it.