Author Topic: The great defrag shootout (Read 75,054 times)

oBFusC8r · « **on:** June 11, 2007, 05:36 PM »

Donn Edwards has written a comprehensive review, called "The great defrag shootout", covering just about every defrag app out there for the Windows platform. It is an interesting read and Donn clearly has spent a lot of time on this defrag investigation of his.

http://donnedwards.openaccess.co.za/2007/04/great-defrag-shootout-part-1.html

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OGroeger · « **Reply #1 on:** June 11, 2007, 06:36 PM »

Whow, an excellent article.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #2 on:** June 11, 2007, 06:57 PM »

Interesting comment :

Quote

I was looking forward to reviewing PerfectDisk Rx Suite 1.0 by Raxco, since I have been using PerfectDisk Pro 8 for some time already, and found it to be pretty thorough, albeit stubborn and sluggish at times. I found out about the Rx Suite from the PerfectDisk blog. Going from PD8 to PDRx is like going from the sublime to the ridiculous. The less they market this product the longer Raxco will remain in business. It's that bad.
The first good point I noticed is that at $29.99 it's cheaper that PD8's $39.99. But it isn't worth the money: it's like PerfectDisk Lite with bugs, and it's a massive 25.8MB download. Almost every feature I tried didn't work properly.

Pretty much experience of people here daft enough to try it!

Interesting comments about DiskKeeper - what the heck are they playing at these days ???

Darwin · « **Reply #3 on:** June 11, 2007, 07:08 PM »

Yes - I read the Diskeeper comments with interest. As I've mentioned elsewhere, I have it installed on my wife's notebook and it seems to be doing its thing without offending her! I've occasionally analysed her disk with it to see if it's doing it's job and all seems well. Perhaps I'd have a different perspective if I was using it all the time. Just to note, I've been impressed with its speed when I've run analyses and on the odd occasions where I've had it defrag. Interesting. Might have to look at it a little more closely.

PS She's running Diskeeper 2007 Professional Premier, so has i-FAAST and the "on the fly" defragging features.

I'm running PerfectDisk on my own machine and am quite curious about how it will fare. I'm guessing that it's not going to do that well - middle of the pack, anyway. Bets anyone?

cmpm · « **Reply #4 on:** June 11, 2007, 07:15 PM »

hmmm..O&O is free at this time...

http://filehippo.com/download_oo_defrag/

a lite version

edbro · « **Reply #5 on:** June 11, 2007, 07:48 PM »

It is interesting that the one he likes the best, JKDefrag, is freeware. That's what I like to see.

I have PerfectDisk8 on my machine but I might try JkDefrag just because of the price and the GPL license.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #6 on:** June 11, 2007, 09:18 PM »

Quote from: Darwin on June 11, 2007, 07:08 PM

I'm running PerfectDisk on my own machine and am quite curious about how it will fare. I'm guessing that it's not going to do that well - middle of the pack, anyway. Bets anyone?

Perfect Disc 8 Pro seems to be his 'permanently installed' defragger. There isn't a separate review that I can see but he uses it as a benchmark and for good all round reliability - and doing what it says it does he seems happy. The only criticism seem to be:

Doesn't seem to fully defrag the MFT (and can't reduce it's size)
Doesn't automatically organise free space 100% effectively
Leaves some files fragmented and sometimes splits a file around a fixed file.

The first and last are the most irritating to my mind - and I have noticed the third one on drives with large files. You can force better consolidation of free space but you can cook and eat a five course banquet while it does it!

edbro · « **Reply #7 on:** June 11, 2007, 09:35 PM »

Quote from: Carol Haynes on June 11, 2007, 09:18 PM

Quote from: Darwin on June 11, 2007, 07:08 PM
I'm running PerfectDisk on my own machine and am quite curious about how it will fare. I'm guessing that it's not going to do that well - middle of the pack, anyway. Bets anyone?

Perfect Disc 8 Pro seems to be his 'permanently installed' defragger. There isn't a separate review that I can see but he uses it as a benchmark and for good all round reliability - and doing what it says it does he seems happy. The only criticism seem to be:

Doesn't seem to fully defrag the MFT (and can't reduce it's size)
Doesn't automatically organise free space 100% effectively
Leaves some files fragmented and sometimes splits a file around a fixed file.

The first and last are the most irritating to my mind - and I have noticed the third one on drives with large files. You can force better consolidation of free space but you can cook and eat a five course banquet while it does it!

What he says on his downloads page is:

Quote

I am using JKDefrag a lot more than PerfectDisk, because it's free, quick and thorough. It has replaced PD in the batch file that does a complete defrag of my entire hard drive.

http://www.openaccess.co.za/BlackAndWhiteInc/freebies.htm

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #8 on:** June 11, 2007, 09:54 PM »

Thanks - I didn't look at the download page because I figured I would stick with Perfect Disk.

The trouble with using more than one tool is that they all have different ideas on disk layout and importance of certain files so each time you run one and then the other they spend time reorganising each other's work.

Personally I think that once you have found a setup you are happy with it is probably best to stick with it - or move wholesale to a new system.

Darwin · « **Reply #9 on:** June 11, 2007, 11:32 PM »

Quote

Personally I think that once you have found a setup you are happy with it is probably best to stick with it - or move wholesale to a new system.

Sage advice - I'm curious about how PD does, but won't be rushing to implement the "winning" app. In many ways, a lot of this comes down to user preference. I'm happy with PD on my notebook and DK on my wife's... And so it goes.

MrCrispy · « **Reply #10 on:** June 12, 2007, 02:18 AM »

That was an interesting read. I gave up on Diskeeper after its disappointing performance and overly complex UI and use PD, but I'm thinking I should just use JkDefrag and the the other freeware mentioned. Disk defragmentation is a game of diminishing returns anyway and there really is no point trying to squeeze that last bit of performance by running continuous defrag jobs. If anything it places additional stress on the hard disk.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #11 on:** June 12, 2007, 09:10 AM »

The problem (for me) with JkDefrag is that it lacks any controls in windows at all - you run it or you don't and if you do it processes ALL your hard disks in order. No matter how fast it is that is going to take a long time on my system.

The only alternative is to use a batch file to run it with command switches - not exactly user friendly but I'd guess many here could manage (esp. those of us who grew up on MS DOS).

Maybe a coding snack to produce a simple GUI to generate and execute the app with the correct switches would be a nice addition to the app.

tomos · « **Reply #12 on:** June 12, 2007, 09:45 AM »

Carol
I just downloaded it with a GUI this morning from The Great Defrag Shootout VIII: JkDefrag v3.8

there's a download link towards bottom of page for a packaged version of

JkDefrag
JkDefrag GUI
PageDefrag v.32
NTREGOPT

Quote

The only "missing" aspect of this program is that there are certain files it can't defragment because they are in use by the system. They recommend using Sysinternals PageDefrag v.32 to defragment these files, and the combination of the two works incredibly well. There is a third free utility, called NTREGOPT which can be run before rebooting, and this will compact the registry, after which PageDefrag sorts out any fragmentation. A "complete" install with all the necessary utilities is available here.

The installer only makes a shortcut for JkDefrag.exe, but the others are in same folder (I dont know if they all portable?)

[attachimg=#]

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EDIT: havent actually used it yet, just had a look

EDIT2: not sure what the 1% free space in second screenshot is - could it be the space you allow it to use? (my C drive is fairly full but not that full..)

tomos · « **Reply #13 on:** June 12, 2007, 09:57 AM »

some more screenshots of JkDefrag GUI at it's home page -
http://www.emro.nl/freeware/

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #14 on:** June 12, 2007, 12:09 PM »

Thanks

Curt · « **Reply #15 on:** June 12, 2007, 03:05 PM »

Quote from: tomos on June 12, 2007, 09:45 AM

EDIT2: not sure what the 1% free space in second screenshot is -

Quote from: The Great Defrag Shootout VIII

By default JkDefrag leaves 1% of the first part of your hard disk free, to be used by temporary files.

- seems you can adjust how many percent you want to be used by temp files

tomos · « **Reply #16 on:** June 12, 2007, 03:13 PM »

thanks Curt just found out the same from a tooltip

The version on offer from the link quoted -

Quote from: tomos on June 12, 2007, 09:45 AM

I just downloaded it with a GUI this morning from The Great Defrag Shootout VIII: JkDefrag v3.8

there's a download link towards bottom of page...

has an older version of JkDefrag
It's confusing cause the version is 3.8 but the more recent version from the homepage is 3.14
Guess the older one should be called 3.08

MrCrispy · « **Reply #17 on:** June 12, 2007, 06:59 PM »

I think the author went from 3.8 -> 3.9 -> 3.1. He should've gone to 4.0 but I guess he didn't think it was a big enough change for that!

lanux128 · « **Reply #18 on:** June 12, 2007, 07:18 PM »

DC's own discussion on defragmenters.. does anyone of you believe in defragmentation programs?

tomos · « **Reply #19 on:** June 13, 2007, 09:21 AM »

Check out this forum thread for more (three!!) GUI options for JkDefrag

The options require a bit of contemplation on my part $:-\$
Here's some of the commandline options

Quote

Select an action to perform. The number N is a value from 1 to 11, default is 3:
1 = Analyze only, do not fixup and do not optimize.
2 = Analyze and fixup, do not optimize.
3 = Analyze, fixup, and fast optimization (default).
5 = Analyze and force together.
6 = Analyze and move to end of disk.
7 = Analyze and sort files by name.
8 = Analyze and sort files by size (smallest first).
9 = Analyze and sort files by last access (newest first).
10 = Analyze and sort files by last change (oldest first).
11 = Analyze and sort files by creation time (oldest first).

mwb1100 · « **Reply #20 on:** June 13, 2007, 06:19 PM »

Quote from: tomos on June 12, 2007, 03:13 PM

It's confusing cause the version is 3.8 but the more recent version from the homepage is 3.14
Guess the older one should be called 3.08

As an aside - in the GNU (or maybe Unix) world, versioning is usually done as a series of whole numbers separated by periods - the numbers are not read as decimal fractions as is often done in the Windows universe.

In other words, 3.1 is not the same as 3.10

So, the version number sequence would look like: 3.8 -> 3.9 -> 3.10 -> 3.11 etc. This system more naturally lends itself to version numbers with more than 2 components. For example, it would be (in my opinion) more confusing to say that version 3.1.126.5600 is equivalent to version 3.100.126.56.

Microsoft and other Windows software vendors usually (but not always) follows the scheme where the version number is read like a decimal (ie., 3.1 == 3.10).

SpiderJon · « **Reply #21 on:** June 21, 2007, 05:52 PM »

Quote from: edbro on June 11, 2007, 07:48 PM

It is interesting that the one he likes the best, JKDefrag, is freeware. That's what I like to see.

Having tried JKDefrag, it seems to take a very long time, even on a supposedly "fast" setting.

tomos · « **Reply #22 on:** June 22, 2007, 08:34 AM »

Quote from: SpiderJon on June 21, 2007, 05:52 PM

Having tried JKDefrag, it seems to take a very long time, even on a supposedly "fast" setting.

I didnt time it but was very happy it defragged a drive that was 95%full
The optimization seemed to take longer than the defragmentation but i was off for dinner so didnt care ...

ClifNotes has it in his newsletter this week & explains how to use it as a screensaver, which i hadnt taken any notice of till now..
http://freewarewiki.com/ClifNotesNewsletter070617#JkDefragauniqueandhandydefragtool

justice · « **Reply #23 on:** July 24, 2007, 08:58 AM »

Yes I find JkDefrag takes a long time, I have set it as a screensaver -> then run my ordinary screensaver, but I never see the latter because JkDefrag is always busy optimizing! the homepage says: Tip: Stop your realtime virus scanner before running JkDefrag. Virus scanners check all disk activity, making defragmentation and optimization very slow. so will try.

Apart from that though (which really is only cosmetic then, it's more useful to optimize files then display pretty pictures) JkDefrag is a godsend from heaven. Free, light and very good.

You can really see what it's up to with the JkDefragCmd setting: it skips to zone 2: fast optimizing very quick. I'm just wondering if it defragments all drives first before optimizing the first drive?

DonnEdwards · « **Reply #24 on:** October 23, 2007, 06:43 AM »

I recently discovered this forum and want to thank everyone who commented on "The Great Defrag Shootout". Currently there are reviews of 16 commercial and 15 freeware defrag utilities, and lnks to a few more. The response has been generally positive, except from Diskeeper users who feel aggrieved because I didn't like DK. My blog IS biased: my opinion is mine and the reasons I give one way or the other are genuine. I don't have to answer to an editor or publisher.

The "winners" of the shootout are PerfectDisk and JkDefrag. I use both on a regular basis, in combination with Contig, PageDefrag, CCleaner and NTREGOPT (a registry compactor). You can download a "packaged" version of JkDefrag from my blog.

I will continue to review new versions of defrag utilities as they are released. I recently tested a beta version of Puran Defrag 3.0, and it is looking promising.