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two more defrag tools - "UltraDefrag" and "Advanced Defrag"

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f0dder:
That app gives a bad name to open source - as if most OSS needs to run as full admin with unsigned drivers!-MrCrispy (December 02, 2009, 05:54 PM)
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Well, to be fair, it takes a fair amount of work and a bit of cash to get your drivers signed - iirc you even have to set up a company (as a legal entity) in order to get a driver signing license.

What troubles me is that attitude - calling UAC and driver signing "bugs"... and then there's the issue of using a driver at all, without detailing why. (There might be a reason, but I'd sure like to know it - both the defrag API as well as directly reading the MFT can be done just fine from usermode).

majoMO:
... and then there's the issue of using a driver at all, without detailing why.-f0dder (December 02, 2009, 05:57 PM)
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From http://ultradefrag.sourceforge.net/overview.html :

It makes use of the same defragmenting API used by many other windows defrag utilities, both open and closed source. However, UltraDefrag has many features that makes it unique. Firstly it has a kernel mode driver that does most of the work, secondly is the ability to run the application at boot up time in a manner similar to chkdsk. This allows for faster defragmentation time and the ability to defragment all files including system files. The work is done via a kernel mode driver which has an optimal defraging algorithm.

f0dder:
majoMO: and that text says absolutely nothing about why they've implemented it via a driver. Defrag API is available to usermode programs, boot-time (chkdsk phase) apps are usermode programs using the NT native API (which has nothing to do with drivers), the ability to defrag system files is because of boot-time not driver, and optimal algorithm is, well, about algorithm and not the use of driver.

majoMO:
Diskeeper uses a file system filter driver also. It seems that is to do their defrag process. UltraDefrag uses it for the same "that does most of the work".

You can request more info about UltraDegrag'driver (it's open source) in their support.

f0dder:
Diskeeper uses a file system filter driver also. It seems that is to do their defrag process.-majoMO (December 03, 2009, 01:12 PM)
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A driver or a service? It makes sense to use a service for defrag, since it can do it's work in the background without a GUI running... and, if you don't care about security, it will let you launch the GUI non-privileged and control the (privileged) service. PerfectDisk does this.

EDIT: Diskeeper info page mentions it has IntelliWrite, which sounds like something that makes sense implementing as a filter driver:
IntelliWrite prevents up to 85% of the fragmentation every system suffers from. It intelligently writes contiguous files to the disk so system resources are not wasted creating fragmentation. The results? A whole new level of system speed and efficiency.
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