Best Defragmenter for XP?

[Danny W]

Which is the best disk defragmenter (i.e. performance gains) available for
Windows XP?

How about Diskeeper 8? Does it work with the prefetcher like the built in
defragger?

Danny W

 

[Brian F-H]

Diskkeeper 8 is just a more full-featured version of the
built in windows defrag util. Personally i prefer norton
speed disk, but which is better is subjective

 

[Doug]

System Mechanic v4 has a defragger that is great. The only caveat is that it
takes a long time to complete the task. Once done though you will see an
increase in performance
Cheers Doug

 

[Rogue]

Which is the best disk defragmenter (i.e. performance gains) available for
Windows XP?

How about Diskeeper 8? Does it work with the prefetcher like the built in
defragger?

Danny W

I used to use Speed Disk until I tried Diskeeper. Yeah it may be a
glorified version of the built in defrag utility, but I find it
faster. With Diskeeper I can defrag all five of my drives in almost
half the time it used to take Speed Disk to do one. With the Set-it
And Forget-it feature of Diskeeper, it will run in the background when
it senses a certain level of fragmentation. In other words, it will
keep your drive(s) defragmented without you having to start it. If
you don't mind a *slight* slow down while it runs in the background,
then Diskeeper might be what you are looking for.

Just my opinion.

Rogue

 

[Yves Leclerc]

Second and third vote for Diskeeper. It is good and with the "Set it and
forget it" feature, it is one of the few who can be automated!

Y.

 

[Vaughn McMillan - Executive Software]

Hi Danny -

Just to add a clarification . . .

It's been noted here (and lot of other places) that the Windows XP
defragmenter is a stripped-down version of Diskeeper. That's not quite
correct.

It's true that Executive Software and Microsoft did team up to build
the defragger that's in Windows 2000, but by the time XP was released
the built-in defragger was changed considerably by Microsoft. There
have been about 6 years of technological "de-convergence" since
Executive Software had much (if any) input on the built-in defragger.

Diskeeper 8.0 is leaps and bounds ahead of the built-in defragmenter,
both speed-wise and feature-wise. (So are most other third-party
defraggers.) However, they all produce essentially the same end
result--defragmented files. Regardless of what some defragmenter
vendors might say, the performance gain from defragging with Diskeeper
will be virtually the same as defragging with any other defragmenter.

I'd suggest looking at several third-party defraggers (most have
trialware available) then choosing one that has the features and
functionality that works best for you.

I hope this helps -

Vaughn McMillan
Executive Software