Defragmenters

Source

Unlike Linux file systems, NTFS gets fragmented over time and use.
To develope a decent file system that doesn't need defragging is something
that should definitely be sorted out. Its definitely Microsoft's fault... no
doubt.
Larger and faster drives have minimized the impact of fragmentation.
The Windows file system tends to fragment files all on its own to a
small degree, but fragmentation starts for real when the drive starts
to get full—as in over 70%.
As the drive fills up, the larger areas of
free space become scarce and the file system has no choice but to
splatter large files around the disk.
As the drive gets really full
(over 90%), the file system then starts to fragment the MFT and the
Pagefile.
Now you've got a full drive, with lots of fragmented files,
making the job of the defragmenter nearly impossible because it also
needs space to do its job.
A drive more than 80%
full is fast not defragmentable. You can see that effect with huge hard disk
drives, since they generally use smaller percentages of the drive's
total free space. A side-effect is that the overall fragmentation is
reduced, and the fact that these drives have faster seek times makes
the effect even less noticeable.

Special comparison:

I have 3 partitions, system C, data D & E on a single HDD on this
PC. Uncompressed, unshadowed, just the plain old NTFS. The partitions
were never defragged in a life of HD (1,5 years). Here's the
"Fragmentation Analysis" results from a couple of popular defraggers
(latest versions of course) - C, D and E respectively -

1. SmartDefrag - 55%, 42%, 44%
2. PerfectDisk - 4%, 5.5%, 7%
3. Diskeeper - 32%, 14%, 78%

Defraggers:
Puran, PerfectDisk, SmartDefrag, O&O, JKDefrag, UltimateDefrag, Diskkeeper, Defraggler
Best combination?: Puran+UltimateDefrag
Maybe: O&O and JKDEFRAG
My defragger: Defraggler

Smart Placement orders the files from the oldest created/modified to
the newest. It does not take in account the last access date.

This means that on the faster tracks will be placed those files that
are almost never modified and in the slower tracks will be placed your
newly created files and those that are modified more frequently.

With PD you do not gain speed at your most often tasks on the contrary you loose it.

PD defragmentation method is great for servers but is almost useless on a common use modern system.


On the other hand Puran Defrag and Smart Defrag will speed your drive,
since they place 1st the directories, 2nd the last accessed files, 3rd
a small free space (1-2gb) which will be used for the temp files and
the more frequently modified files, 4th every other file and 5th a
large free space chunk.


O&O gives detailed advice on what strategy to use. The choices are far more
than what other defraggers offer and when done right, O&O excels in
terms of performance. German Software, was soll denn!

Minimalistic solution:
Use Contig together with the Power Defragmenter GUI for Contig. Plus Pagedefrag when necessary. Also wipe free space with Blowfish Advanced.

Contig 1.54
Power Defragmenter GUI for Contig
Pagedefrag

Freeware for modifying the attributes of
files and directories:

Attribute Changer 6.0a


SetFileDate 2.0