Defraggers for XP

[Stan Brown]

As the single most common performance degrading issue on almost
every PC I work on I take exception to your "Overrated" statement.

Once defragged and run on a schedule (not defined, as it varies based
on disk use), it most definitely contributes to a computer's performance.

I don't think anyone would argue that it contributes more than
zero. But the issue is that other things contribute much more --
available memory, for instance.

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com
A: Maybe because some people are too annoyed by top-posting.
Q: Why do I not get an answer to my question(s)?
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read
text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

 

[Richard Urban]

Remember, the hard drive is many thousands of times slower that the slowest
computer electronics (electricity travels 186,000 miles per second in "any"
processor).

Any help you can give the drive................

--
Regards,

Richard Urban

aka Crusty (-: Old B@stard

If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[DJ Borell]

As Linda stated, I think the bottom comes out to be features. I've used
several defrag programs and finally settled on Diskeeper some time ago. The
only reason I settled on that one, though, was the fact that it allows for a
disk defrag to occur any time one is "needed" but only in the background
(others may now offer this feature, it's been a while since I've looked at
anything else, which tells me Diskeeper is working for me.) I use this on
my laptop as I don't really care for it to "wake-up" from standby to run a
defrag once a week or whatever.

As far as working better than the XP built-in defrag utility, I've never
seen it defrag any more quickly, efficiently or better (though their website
says it does a better job.) Although, I've never benchmarked it, either.

 

[Ken Blake]

On the machines I've worked on where system performance is bad
and
defragging the drive resulted in a noticeable gain in
performance, the
drives on those machines have been very heavily fragmented. I
do realize
that defragmenting a heavily fragmented drive can result in
increased system
performance;

Yep!


what I do not agree with is that defragging a drive can result
in fixing broken programs, finding missing files, fixing OS
errors, etc --

Of course not. But unless i missed it, I didn't see anybody
claiming this in this thread.

what I was commenting on is that I see defragmentation
prescribed as a
remedy for wider system problems all the time, when in fact
fragmentation
has nothing to do with them. In other words, "as a tech
support tool", like
I said before -- I probably should have explained myself a
little better.

In any case, my previous advice stands, I think: the third
party tools and
the XP tool probably defrag a drive exactly the same.

I don't know that they are *exactly* the same, but I agree with
you that any differences in the results are at least very minor.
But they don't necessarily take the same amount of time to
achieve those results, and that difference in speed is probably
among the greatest of the differences between the products.

 

[Ken Blake]

Ken. PC Magazine does their usual (yearly) roundup of utilities
like these. I
think they preffered the Raxco Product, if that helps.

Although I too prefer the Raxco product, I have very little
confidence in PC Magazine's ability to provide accurate reliable
reviews. I don't think they're a good source of information at
all.

 

[Guest]

Why? What axes do they have to grind? Why are they not reliable? I don't see
a lot of Raxco advertising on their site.

 

[Ken Blake]

Why? What axes do they have to grind? Why are they not
reliable? I don't see
a lot of Raxco advertising on their site.

I don't know why. I do know that I very often disagree with their
conclusions, and don't trust them.

I also know that a number of years ago, I had a young woman
working for me (I inherited her, and didn't hire her myself)
whose previous job had been with PC Magazine, writing reviews for
them.

She was next to useless, and could barely spell "PC," let alone
write meaningful reviews about PC Products. If she was typical of
their reviewers (although I don't know that), that's why.

 

[SFB - KB3MM]

Who wrote the XP defrag ? <>

I have noticed the same thing (different algorithm for placing files), even
as between the XP defragger and Diskeeper, much less between XP and Raxco.
Now, assuming that Microsoft presumably knows better than anyone else how
files should be defragged and arranged on an XP hard drive, is this a reason
for preferring the XP defragger? Note that the Raxco algorithm (I don't know
about Diskeeper) changes the placement of the layout.ini files on the hard
drive. When I go from Raxco back to native Windows, the first thing it does
is to clear a bunch of space at the beginning of the drive and then moves
other files (presumably prefetch files or layout.ini) to that location. Does
Raxco know something that MS doesn't know, or vice versa?

 

[SFB - KB3MM]

Don't they use the DEFRAG API?

lol... I'll need to take your word for it -- you obviously know much more
about it than I.

LB

both.

 

[SFB - KB3MM]

I always thought that VMS supplied RABBITT which was by ExecSoftware.

 

[Not Me]

I have seen this point [are third party defragmentation tools
significantly better than XP's built in tool] (are they worth the money
spent for them) discussed in many different forums. This entire
discussion is about like all the rest. No facts are presented to prove
that one is significantly better than any other. Participants agree that
defragmentation needs to be accomplished regularly. The point is not
made that the average user would experience anything significant [except
a reduced amount of cash] by acquiring a third party program.
Discussions about the defragmentation algorithm [the procedure used to
solve a problem] in use by one or the other abound but without any
substantial point. I suspect that the major difference between then are
the extras in interfaces rather than the root procedures and end results.
Gene K

 

[Art]

Readers might be interested in the following article from the February, 2004
issue of PCWorld ...


Defraggers: No Longer Needed?

When was the last time you defragmented your hard disk? As your PC creates,
modifies, and deletes files on the hard drive, files tend to get broken up
into pieces that are physically scattered around the disk. Drives and file
systems are built to keep track of these noncontiguous file parts, but if a
significant portion of your hard drive has become fragmented, its
performance might suffer.

Then again, it might not. When the PC World Test Center set out to determine
the effectiveness of the defrag utilities in our set of suites, plus that of
Diskeeper 8 from Executive Software, our analysts found no evidence that
defragmentation enhanced performance. On a desktop system from the PC World
office with a heavily used, never-defragmented hard drive, the lab conducted
speed tests using a range of applications before and after defragmenting the
drive with each utility. In the end, the Test Center saw no significant
performance improvement after defragmenting with any program. This result
flies in the face of the received wisdom that fragmentation hinders
performance, though much older PCs (with slower and smaller hard drives) and
heavily used servers may benefit more from defragging.

Fortunately, you don't have to buy a defragger to see if it will boost
performance on your system: Every copy of Windows comes with a
defragmentation tool. However, it is not particularly easy to use. Diskeeper
8 Professional Edition offers set-it-and-forget-it scheduling options, the
ability to prioritize or skip defragmentation of specific files, and a
display that predicts how much faster your system will be after
defragmentation. Our tests didn't validate those predictions, though; again,
we saw no performance gains after defragmenting.

I have seen this point [are third party defragmentation tools
significantly better than XP's built in tool] (are they worth the money
spent for them) discussed in many different forums. This entire discussion
is about like all the rest. No facts are presented to prove that one is
significantly better than any other. Participants agree that
defragmentation needs to be accomplished regularly. The point is not made
that the average user would experience anything significant [except a
reduced amount of cash] by acquiring a third party program. Discussions
about the defragmentation algorithm [the procedure used to solve a
problem] in use by one or the other abound but without any substantial
point. I suspect that the major difference between then are the extras in
interfaces rather than the root procedures and end results.
Gene K

I don't question that defragging makes a HD run faster and better. I
have noticed it myself. My question goes more to the narrow question of
whether a third party program like Diskeepr or Raxco is transparently
better (i.e. enough to be noticable to a user) at improving HD
performance than the built-in XP defragger. I am an enthusiastic user
of both programs, so I don't have a dog in the fight other than whether
anyone has even tried to measure the difference, if any, in improvements
in performance.

:

 

[Gerry Cornell]

To All Participating in this Debate

Some factors impacting on Disk Defragmenting seem not to have got a
mention in this latest debate.

The organisation of folders can have a material affect on defragmenting.
The use of partitions to place the operating system, programmes and data
in their own partitions is often done to be tidy and aid taking backups.
However, if the factor of what rapidly fragments and what suffers little
fragmentation is taken into account then this will mean that some parts
of the hard disk need only be defragmented occasionally and other parts
regularly. This can have a material affect on time taken. Why waste time
regularly defragmenting the swap file or archived data files?

More attention seems to have be given to defragmenting than to another
function Disk Defragmenter performs, namely compacting. However, Disk
Defragmenter is not the only tool, which compacts. The obvious example
is Outlook Express. If you use Outlook Express to compact before running
Disk Defragmenter it noticeably reduces the time taken to defragment. I
know this because I have partitions devoted exclusively to individual
Outlook Express identities. I have also noted that there is some
facility to compact in Microsoft Access.

System Restore also is greatly involved in fragmentation. If a drive is
partitioned then only the partition containing the operating system
needs to have System Restore enabled.

I do not have experience in using either third party defragmenter.
However if the page file is in it's own partition what benefit is a
facility to defragment the page file? The benefits of defragmenting the
page file are often dismissed as questionable because of what the page
file is! It is a constantly changing file, which to a certain extent can
be made smaller by adding RAM memory. An argument for investing in more
memory rather than on a third party Disk Defragmenter.


--


Regards.

Gerry

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
FCA

Stourport, Worcs, England
Enquire, plan and execute.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Leythos]

I have seen this point [are third party defragmentation tools
significantly better than XP's built in tool] (are they worth the money
spent for them) discussed in many different forums. This entire
discussion is about like all the rest. No facts are presented to prove
that one is significantly better than any other. Participants agree that
defragmentation needs to be accomplished regularly. The point is not
made that the average user would experience anything significant [except
a reduced amount of cash] by acquiring a third party program.
Discussions about the defragmentation algorithm [the procedure used to
solve a problem] in use by one or the other abound but without any
substantial point. I suspect that the major difference between then are
the extras in interfaces rather than the root procedures and end results.

Well, Gene, it's obvious that you've not tried any of the third-party
tools in a real world environment.

Any tool that will FULLY defrag the drive is good - native XP defragger
does not.

Any tool that can "pack" a drive is good - native XP defragger tries

Any tool that can consolidate files, system files, and folders into a
better area of the drive is good - native XP defragger can't

Any tool that can be scheduled for non-peak times is good - native XP
defragger can't

Any tool that can run in the background using minimal CPU load and do it's
magic is good - native XP defragger can't

Here are examples of how I use it on workstations and servers:

1) Development workstations - Daily Runs from 12:00AM to 2:00AM nightly,
continuously, full defrag.

2) Development workstations - Sunday, Stop SQL services and other server
type services, Runs from 12:00AM to 2:00AM nightly, continuously, full
defrag. Restart Services

3) Non-Production Servers - Daily Stop SQL services and other server
type services, Runs from 12:00AM to 2:00AM nightly, continuously, full
defrag. Restart Services.

4) Production Services - Sunday - run once, full defrag. Leave service
running online.

Before I did this the developers would complain, performance suffered, and
we had just normal performance out of the systems. With this automated
schedule everything runs as fast as possible disk-wise, so the only time
we see any issues is when someone forgets to reindex a database

 

[Leythos]

Then again, it might not. When the PC World Test Center set out to determine
the effectiveness of the defrag utilities in our set of suites, plus that of
Diskeeper 8 from Executive Software, our analysts found no evidence that
defragmentation enhanced performance.

And look at what they tested, what REAL IT PEOPLE HAVE TO SAY, and what
the real world shows. In 95 I bought a Zeos Pantera P90, it had been rated
as #1 for almost a year (the line) and the one I bought was rated #1 in
their MAG (trash) for two months before I bought it - what a piece of
junk! Went through several motherboards, etc.... In the end I learned that
PC Mag reviews are based on advertising investment by the vendors - if you
don't buy Ad's you don't get a review or a good review, but if you buy 6
or 8 large Ad's you get in the top 5 always.

 

[R. McCarty]

Perfect Disk places the Pagefile in the optimal location on a drive or
partition. The only time I've seen it move it again is when an Off-line
defrag is done where the check box for "System Files" is enabled, &
MFT or other locked files require re-arrangement. So I don't agree
with your recommendation to Exclude Pagefile.Sys from the defrag.
You don't advocate setting a minimum Pagefile size below the physical
memory size and then recommend locking it's location on the drive.

I make a good faith effort to follow your postings, but your writings
remind me of a Engineer I worked with years ago. He could expound
on things that the rest of us had to try and decipher at lunchtime. He
usually had a point but it got buried in the details. Eventually, we all
just nodded our heads like we understood and moved on.

 

[Crusty \(-: Old B@stard :-\)]

My test.

I run Photoshop on a second computer and work with many files that are 10-20
meg. For an experiment, I allowed this computer to go for 3 months without
defragmenting. I then, with stopwatch in hand, opened one of my larger
files. It took about 20 seconds to open.

I then defragged all the partitions and drives on the computer. I rebooted
(so the file wouldn't be opened from RAM). Upon reboot the file opened in
less than 8 seconds.

You have got to believe!

--
Regards,

Richard Urban

aka Crusty (-: Old B@stard

If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

I have seen this point [are third party defragmentation tools
significantly better than XP's built in tool] (are they worth the money
spent for them) discussed in many different forums. This entire
discussion is about like all the rest. No facts are presented to prove
that one is significantly better than any other. Participants agree that
defragmentation needs to be accomplished regularly. The point is not
made that the average user would experience anything significant [except
a reduced amount of cash] by acquiring a third party program.
Discussions about the defragmentation algorithm [the procedure used to
solve a problem] in use by one or the other abound but without any
substantial point. I suspect that the major difference between then are
the extras in interfaces rather than the root procedures and end results.

Well, Gene, it's obvious that you've not tried any of the third-party
tools in a real world environment.

Any tool that will FULLY defrag the drive is good - native XP defragger
does not.

Any tool that can "pack" a drive is good - native XP defragger tries

Any tool that can consolidate files, system files, and folders into a
better area of the drive is good - native XP defragger can't

Any tool that can be scheduled for non-peak times is good - native XP
defragger can't

Any tool that can run in the background using minimal CPU load and do it's
magic is good - native XP defragger can't

Here are examples of how I use it on workstations and servers:

1) Development workstations - Daily Runs from 12:00AM to 2:00AM nightly,
continuously, full defrag.

2) Development workstations - Sunday, Stop SQL services and other server
type services, Runs from 12:00AM to 2:00AM nightly, continuously, full
defrag. Restart Services

3) Non-Production Servers - Daily Stop SQL services and other server
type services, Runs from 12:00AM to 2:00AM nightly, continuously, full
defrag. Restart Services.

4) Production Services - Sunday - run once, full defrag. Leave service
running online.

Before I did this the developers would complain, performance suffered, and
we had just normal performance out of the systems. With this automated
schedule everything runs as fast as possible disk-wise, so the only time
we see any issues is when someone forgets to reindex a database

 

[Guest]

This type of post is exactly what prompted my original question in this
thread. Yes, PerfectDisk moves files around (e.g. pagefile, MTF zone) in
order to place them in what it terms the "optimal" position on the disk.
That's great, but what is the tangible, transparent, objectively verifiable
or measurable result for the end user like me? Does it really make my
machine go faster, and if so by how much? If I am talking about a 5-10
minute defrag (or longer) in order to win at most a few more nanoseconds in
file opening time that a human being will never notice, what's the point?

Again, I'm not criticizing PerfectDisk here, or Diskeeper for that matter.
I have used both programs for years, and as third party utility software
goes, they are top notch.

Perfect Disk places the Pagefile in the optimal location on a drive or
partition. The only time I've seen it move it again is when an Off-line
defrag is done where the check box for "System Files" is enabled, &
MFT or other locked files require re-arrangement. So I don't agree
with your recommendation to Exclude Pagefile.Sys from the defrag.
You don't advocate setting a minimum Pagefile size below the physical
memory size and then recommend locking it's location on the drive.

[...]

 

[Guest]

will the paid programs make your machine go faster immediatly after a
defrag as opposed to the native defrag is what you're asking

Right. My precise question is, what is the marginal improvement in
performance, if any, between the native defraggers and third party defraggers.

I don't think a normal user could measure the differance immediatly
between the differant applications

but if the free space isn't consolodated in the native application,
future files are created in fragments much more often, more head
activity, more seek time over all, etc...you'll want to defrag more
often because the files will be fragmented more...more down time...down
time might translate into a return on the investment.

I understand this point. The solution, if you use the native XP defragger,
is to defrag more often than the program recommends, particularly after
adding or deleting lots of files. Eventually the free space gets
consolidated using the native defragger or diskeeper, just not as quickly as
with PerfectDisk. When I am using the XP defragger, I defrag anytime I am
permanently adding or deleting files, e.g. after adding permanent files to My
Documents (this is probably slight overkill), installing or uninstalling
software, or updating that software.

tough call as far as I can see...if the price of the app is a concern,
then personally, I think you're best not spending the money....if the
price isn't a concern, get the thing...I personally think pd is a
better app then diskeeper, but if I had to choose where I spent my
money, I would look to other things before a paid defrag
program...that's just an opinion

Price is not a concern, but I would say that a fast CPU and lots of memory
will do far more for performance than using a third party defragger over the
Windows XP. From the overall system performance viewpoint, fragmentation
affects only how quickly a file from a disk is initially loaded into RAM.

Ken

 

[Leythos]

Right. My precise question is, what is the marginal improvement in
performance, if any, between the native defraggers and third party defraggers.

There is no single answer to your question as there is not single use for
a computer that leaves the drive in the same state.

A home user, with their IE cache set to 1026MB (or some other
ridiculously large number) by default, and never doing anything except
browsing and email, may never see any benefit.

A developer, designer, audio/video buff, etc... would notice the
difference between a native defrag and a FULL defrag with consolidation.