What is a good disk defragmenter for Vista?

[Alton Davis]

I just got a new laptop with Vista home Premium on it and I'm not sure that
disk defragmentation works. After an hour or so it says its still
defragmenting but there's nothing I can see to let me know whether or not
it's still working. Even if I leave it on all night it never says
defragmenting is complete. I have two XP machines and they never take
longer that 10 mins. even though they have a lot of data on them. The
laptop has nothing but Vista and some programs so it should be much faster
to defragment.
Thanks,
Al

 

[John Hanley]

My Vista Home Premium Disk Defragmentation is scheduled to run automatically
once per week, and does so without much fuss or bother. On a few occasions
I look at the Disk Defragmentation window but when I do it simply says that
it ran successfully at such and such a time etc. I have pretty much gotten
over the need to see the live defrag progress display as there was in XP;
now it is something I don't have to bother with.

 

[David]

Auslogics has a free defragger which is fast and works with Vista.

 

[Steve Thackery]

MS decided, correctly in my opinion, that this was a background

operation.

Ah, what a joy to read such a sensible assessment!

Watching coloured blocks shuffle around meaninglessly is a particularly
nerdish pastime.

SteveT

 

[Lord Takyon]

Watching the blocks does seem a bit dumb, but it does give a good
visual cue as to how much fragmentation exists for any given volume.
There is no reason for Defrag NOT to be a background task, but was it
really necessary to remove all kind of progress displays? Whether it be
the traditional blocks display or even a % meter, Windows Vista Defrag
is tedious in that you don't know how much time is left before the
defrag is complete!


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The first time I used the Vista defrag was straight after install. After 48
hours it was still going. Rebooted and it said it had already been done but
needed doing again, this time it was running for 70+hours solid, still never
finished. The machine was sat idle and there was nothing else on it at that
stage.

The inbuilt defrag tool has never actually finished once for me so I use a
third party app now.

 

[Mike Hall - MVP]

Disk defragmentation is never complete as long as the machine is in use,
hence Vista Defrag never officially finishes. Third party defragmenters like
Diskeeper or PerfectDisk allow a greater degree of scheduling, either low or
high priority, and also allow the user to optimize the MFT for each
partition or drive. They do also allow the user to see what is happening,
but as with all 3rd party defragmenters, it is a visualization and is by no
means deadly accurate.

 

[Alton Davis]

Thanks for all the comments. I downloaded Auslogics Disk Defrag and it
seems to work well. This laptop will be used mainly for taking notes,
writing minutes, and giving Powerpoint presentations in various church
meetings so I don't want any interference while I'm using it. I want to do
all of the maintenence and updates at one time. Most of the time it's off
and about the only reason for having an internet connection is to do
updates. I've turned off automatic updates and haven't installed any
antivirus software.
Al

 

[David]

Ah, what a joy to read such a sensible assessment!

Watching coloured blocks shuffle around meaninglessly is a
particularly nerdish pastime.

SteveT

only a nerd would expect that other users would sit in front of an
Auslogics screens for entertainment. Ever heard of stepping away from
your PC for a few minutes? or cruising the 'net while auslogics does
it's speedy thing??

Dave

 

[David]

The first time I used the Vista defrag was straight after install.
After 48 hours it was still going. Rebooted and it said it had
already been done but needed doing again, this time it was running for
70+hours solid, still never finished. The machine was sat idle and
there was nothing else on it at that stage.

The inbuilt defrag tool has never actually finished once for me so I
use a third party app now.

like me, u discovered yet another "feature" of Vista is merely another POS.

 

[David]

Thanks for all the comments. I downloaded Auslogics Disk Defrag and it
seems to work well.

I KNEW u would like it!

Dave

 

[Mike Hall - MVP]

It is the non-nerds who have a history of watching Defrag strut its stuff..

 

[David]

It is the non-nerds who have a history of watching Defrag strut its
stuff..

You can't seriously believe what u wrote and also have the mental
faculties sufficient to tie your own shoes.

Dave

 

[Mike Hall - MVP]

Obviously, you have not been around enough non-nerds, as in the more
computer illiterate, to know.

 

[Iain]

I just got a new laptop with Vista home Premium on it and I'm not sure that
disk defragmentation works. After an hour or so it says its still
defragmenting but there's nothing I can see to let me know whether or not
it's still working. Even if I leave it on all night it never says
defragmenting is complete. I have two XP machines and they never take
longer that 10 mins. even though they have a lot of data on them. The
laptop has nothing but Vista and some programs so it should be much faster
to defragment.
Thanks,
Al

Haven't used defrag tool yet on this new laptop, but on my old Win95
laptop I generally ran chkdsk and defrag tools in "safe mode". This
seemed to work better and faster in that mode.

BTW, does "safe mode" still exist under Vista?