Defraggler,add another defragger to the list

[tinyvillager]

http://www.defraggler.com/

Cut and paste...

"From everyone here at Piriform, the company that brought you CCleaner and Recuva... we now bring you a file defragmentation tool... Defraggler!

It differs from other defrag tools on the market, by enabling you to quickly and simply defrag the files you want to, without having to process the whole drive. Simply run it, select the file and defragment in seconds. No more struggling with the Windows defragmentation tool!

And remember like all Piriform products, Defraggler is completely free for both corporate and individual use."

He hasn't posted the download yet,but I thought everyone would like to check it out.
Piriform has yet to let me down.

[f0dder]

So, basically a GUI version of sysinternals' contig?

[Carol Haynes]

Download is there now - still in beta though. Not sure I want to try out a beta app to defragment files - if there are any bugs .... yikes

[PhilB66]

So, basically a GUI version of sysinternals' contig?

There's one @ http://freeweb.siol.net/razor256/info/powerdefrag.txt by Excessive Software

[f0dder]

Download is there now - still in beta though. Not sure I want to try out a beta app to defragment files - if there are any bugs .... yikes

Shouldn't be much of a problem these days, Carol, since all a defrag app really does is use NT APIs - no "direct" disk access is involved, contrary to the FAT/Win9x defrag days.

[justice]

unless you're running big databases or such, I've never seen evidence in support of home users needing to defrag single files really. (maybe wow data files lol). Yeah it feels super organised but you could spend that 1-10 minutes better, like making a cup of coffee. (or enjoy the benfits of green tea). It is quite a specialised usage from my experience so the program doesn't really sit nicely next to their other offerings?

See the comments by the windows defrag team who have done tests on this:

A lot of customers complain that the Windows XP defrag is more thorough because running the Windows XP Disk Defragmenter against a Windows Vista volume reveals a lot of fragmentation. What gives?
This misconception is due to our partial defrag algorithm in Windows Vista. We don’t try to make the volume 100% defragmented because defragmenting to the point where there are no fragmented files has negligible benefits. In our Defrag FAQ we state: “The performance benefit of coalescing two extents larger than 64 MB is minimal while the I/O load and free space requirements are significant. “ What this means is that the amount of time it takes to move the 64-MB fragment of a file is larger than the performance benefit you gain. This 64-MB figure comes from how long it takes to move and read/search a 64-MB file on an NTFS volume. Searching for the next extent of a file on an NTFS volume takes less than 1% of the time to read through the file extent at a size of 64 MB. For this reason, trying to bring together chunks bigger than 64 MB is not worth the effort in terms of CPU I/O and free space.

[f0dder]

Heh, "regular Jon Doe who uses office and surfs the web a bit won't feel a benefit from more thorough defragmenting, so we won't do it at all" - way to go, Microsoft.

Proper defragmenting certainly is noticeable for the rest of us. Large game data files, virtual machine disk images, etc... And do try burning a heavily fragmented DVD image and watch the buffer indicator while doing so...

Craptastic.

[justice]

Note that it seems the quote is referring to fragments larger than 64mb not files. so if you have a 2gb vpc image with 4 fragments there's no point defragmenting it, but if it has 40 then it does.

[Lashiec]

Also, if disaster struck, a defragmented disk will be more useful when it comes to data recovering than one fragmented to no end. Anyway, it's quite a controversial theme, just like swap file configuration, and experts are still discussing the issue.

[wreckedcarzz]

Looks good, but in comparison to JkDefrag, it doesn't hold up. Takes far too long to do anything, and won't let you analyze a 2nd drive without losing the analysis for the first.

Maybe I'll give it another go when its out of beta.