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

tomos · « **Reply #25 on:** October 23, 2007, 07:01 AM »

hi Donn, welcome!

thanks for the "Shootout" - it's a great series of reviews!

I see you have a 20% discount from Raxco for Perfect Disk on the winners page - tempting

Armando · « **Reply #26 on:** October 23, 2007, 07:22 AM »

Welcome DonnEdwards!
Thanks for posting here!
As you can see, your blog has many readers.

J-Mac · « **Reply #27 on:** October 23, 2007, 07:35 AM »

I used Diskkeeper 7, 8, and 9, and then grew really weary of their sales schemes. First Pro version was required for a desktop PC and Light version for notebooks (Where oh where was the logic in that?) Then they changed that in 8, and then again in 9. I still wasn't sure what the heck I had when they started the hard sell on Version 10; writing me and insisting that I had to upgrade to 10 and stop using 9!

I went with Perfect disk about 2 years ago and never looked back. Granted I am not as knowledgeable in defragging as the reviewer obviously is, but I feel a lot more comfortable with PD than I did with DK.

Jim

Darwin · « **Reply #28 on:** October 23, 2007, 05:38 PM »

Hi Donn - welcome to DC! Hope to see more of you around the boards. Thanks, too, for the shootout

I use both Diskeeper and PerfectDisk but agree with your conclusions. There ARE reasons to like Diskeeper 2007 Professional Premier (not necessarily in preference to PerfectDisk, mind) but the price difference between it and PerfectDisk 8 are so great that it's a no brainer which way I recommend my friends to jump (OK that should read "would recommend" as the vast majority of the people that I know are happy with XP/Vista's built in defrag utility)...

Armando · « **Reply #29 on:** October 23, 2007, 07:17 PM »

Quote from: Darwin on October 23, 2007, 05:38 PM

the price difference between it and PerfectDisk 8 are so great that it's a no brainer which way I recommend my friends to jump (OK that should read "would recommend" as the vast majority of the people that I know are happy with XP/Vista's built in defrag utility)...

Not to mention the free a very able JkDefrag (with or wthout GUI)...

Darwin · « **Reply #30 on:** October 23, 2007, 07:46 PM »

Hmmm... Diskeeper 2008 is out. Downloading it now to take it for a spin (I think - my "Diskeeper Machine" is having the cooling unit replaced under warranty - I'm not sure I want to mix PerfectDisk and Diskeeper on my primary notebook...).

mouser · « **Reply #31 on:** October 23, 2007, 08:37 PM »

Hey Donn!

Welcome to the site, and fantastic work

MerleOne · « **Reply #32 on:** December 11, 2007, 01:36 PM »

Great article indeed. It helped me discover a new challenger in this competitive landscape : Puran Defrag 4.0

GUI is extremely basic (no graphical display), very little to configure (which is a plus for many users). I have evaluated PD4 on several XP machines and I concur with the overall conclusion of this article : it delivers very well what it is supposed to.

1/ It is fast
2/ Defrag disk are very well optimized and I can feel the difference
3/ Re-Defrag is very quick
4/ Boot Time Defrag seems OK

I would have liked the ability to exclude files and a graphical display of the "after" file layout.

MerleOne · « **Reply #33 on:** December 12, 2007, 08:14 PM »

Since today, PD4 price is reduced to 14.95USD (instead of 24.95USD) for a limited time, see http://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=11306.msg90628#msg90628

Lusher · « **Reply #34 on:** December 23, 2007, 12:21 PM »

What do you guys think of defraggler? http://www.defraggler.com/

tomos · « **Reply #35 on:** December 23, 2007, 01:39 PM »

Quote from: Lusher on December 23, 2007, 12:21 PM

What do you guys think of defraggler? http://www.defraggler.com/

thread a bit older (Beta, in October)
http://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=10023.0

and with only one post:
http://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=11364.0

a_lunatic · « **Reply #36 on:** January 23, 2008, 04:07 PM »

Got an email today about PerfectDisk 2008 Professional

Quote

The much anticipated "official" release date of the new PerfectDisk 2008 family of products is only days away As you will see on the new website that will be launched on Tuesday (1/29), Because you are a valued customer currently covered by a maintenance plan, you are entitled to a free upgrade to PerfectDisk 2008 Professional and we wanted to get it into your hands a little early.

To see a list of new features added to PerfectDisk 2008 Professional and to take a peek at the new products added to the PerfectDisk 2008 family, click here PerfectDisk 2008

So if you are a customer currently covered by a maintenance plan check your email.

Darwin · « **Reply #37 on:** January 26, 2008, 12:36 AM »

I downloaded and installed PD 9 Pro yesterday and am a bit ambivalent about it at this point. I miss the old GUI and I'm finding the new processes that run in the background to facilitate AutoPilot (which now defrags on the fly): PD91Agent, PD01Scanner, and PD91Engine quite resource hungry. I have left AutoPilot enabled for now, but note that it rendered my computer unusable this morning during an optimization run (invoked while I was away from the computer).

Have you tried this, a-lunatic? If so, what are your thoughts? Overall, I'm sure it's a great upgrade to version 8, but I need to learn how to "tweak" it.

Grorgy · « **Reply #38 on:** January 26, 2008, 01:51 AM »

I've been using that Puran Defrag that someone mentioned, its a good little defrag tool, and according to perfect disks analysis of my drives, it does a better job than perfectdisk at defragging, and the optimization and so on seems to be on a par. Doesnt have a fancy gui or anything, but works and works musch faster than perfect disk for me. http://www.puransoftware.com/

Edit - pd8 pro, i havent updated/graded whatever

a_lunatic · « **Reply #39 on:** January 26, 2008, 02:31 AM »

I have not used AutoPilot as I like to do most stuff like that manually when I know I will not be using my computer for a while plus since I have been using the old version it didn't take long for it to do its job anyway.

I am really liking the new GUI as it has got more info plus for me it is easy to navigate & defrag just one file instead of the whole harddrive.

One thing I have noticed is the Metadata has really a poor rating not long after a system files defrag due to C:\$Extend\$UsnJrnl:$J so I will be trying to work out why that is later.

MerleOne · « **Reply #40 on:** January 26, 2008, 07:00 AM »

Quote from: Grorgy on January 26, 2008, 01:51 AM

I've been using that Puran Defrag that someone mentioned, its a good little defrag tool, and according to perfect disks analysis of my drives, it does a better job than perfectdisk at defragging, and the optimization and so on seems to be on a par. Doesnt have a fancy gui or anything, but works and works musch faster than perfect disk for me. http://www.puransoftware.com/

Edit - pd8 pro, i havent updated/graded whatever

I strongly support this. PuranDefrag also has a powerful command line option which makes it possible to add some features not available from the GUI, like defrag only + optimize dir (without filling gaps).

2007-01-26 update : they have just issued V4.5 that add a basic file mapping display, showing before and after defrag. Also some other improvements for boot-time defrag according to the release notes.

Curt · « **Reply #41 on:** January 26, 2008, 12:01 PM »

After having tested almost all of these defraggers 'you' have mentioned, I have settled with Ashampoo Magical Defrag 2, Advanced Registry Doctor Pro and SysInternals PageDefrag.

bugis · « **Reply #42 on:** January 28, 2008, 06:27 PM »

Quote from: Darwin on January 26, 2008, 12:36 AM

and I'm finding the new processes that run in the background to facilitate AutoPilot (which now defrags on the fly): PD91Agent, PD01Scanner, and PD91Engine quite resource hungry. I have left AutoPilot enabled for now, but note that it rendered my computer unusable this morning during an optimization run (invoked while I was away from the computer).

What were the hardware specs of your test system if I may ask?

Also, when you say 'unusable', do you mean -a crash, or just that the program was leeching all the resources?

Darwin · « **Reply #43 on:** January 28, 2008, 09:31 PM »

Hi bugis - first, I haven't changed a thing in the last few days and have had no further problems, so it *may* have been an isolated "event". My computer (1.4Ghz single core Centrino notebook with 2GB 266 Mhz RAM and 120 GB 5400 rpm HD) was unusable because PD was leeching all the resources and I managed to recover from it gracefully (well... I'll never be accused of being graceful - my computer recovered gracefully

).

Armando · « **Reply #44 on:** January 29, 2008, 05:47 AM »

Darwin : have you uses the free JKDefrag in the past (with the great JKDefrag GUI -- with scheduler, etc.) ? I know I've mentionned it before, but I love JKDefrag. It's simple, free and open source. I'm not a heavy defragmenter though (1- I'm lazy and don't like to have to many useless processes running in the background, 2- I found that it disturbed my backup-imaging process, especially incremental images with True Image).

Darwin · « **Reply #45 on:** January 29, 2008, 06:36 AM »

No - I haven't tried anything other than Diskeeper and PerfectDisk (well, those and the built-in, Diskeeper based defragger in Windows.

PerfectDisk is now perfectly behaved so I'm happy, for now. There's only one process running and it consumes 2186kb of VM...

Armando · « **Reply #46 on:** January 29, 2008, 08:25 AM »

Quote from: Darwin on January 29, 2008, 06:36 AM

There's only one process running and it consumes 2186kb of VM...

That seems nice.