What's the best free disk defragger, not in Windows, for NTFSand FAT drives/partitions?
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From: David Brown on 15 Dec 2009 03:13 Rod Speed wrote: > Cronos wrote >> Rod Speed wrote > >>> Nope, the other fundamental question is whether the measured >>> difference is noticeable. If it isnt, its not worth worrying >>> about. > >> Whether you notice or not is beside the point > > Like hell if is. If you cant see any difference, there isnt any point > in defragging. > >> because the benefit is there and is measurable regardless of if you >> notice it or not. > > Mindlessly silly. > >> I can't tell if my game is running at 24fps or 30fps but knowing it >> is running at 30fps is preferable. > > Even sillier. > I have agreed many times with Rod about defragging, but I think this may be the first time I think his "silly" responses are fully appropriate! If you don't notice the effect of a supposed improvement, then it doesn't matter. Defragging may have a /measurable/ effect on some operations, without being noticeable - in which case, it doesn't matter.
From: David Brown on 15 Dec 2009 03:27 Cronos wrote: > David Brown wrote: > >> "Microsoft disagrees with you" is as good an argument as "Kermit the >> Frog disagrees with you". There are so many bad choices for defaults >> in Windows that this is absolutely no indication that defragging is >> useful in general, or useful on a regular basis. > > But Microsoft is not Kermit the frog and have many very smart people > working for them so I think it might be prudent to give them some > credibility instead of discounting them without understanding why they > have it set to auto defrag once per week. My guess is they do that > because to do it once a week means it is far quicker to keep the HDDs > defragged than doing it once every few months. Respect and credibility is something a person or company must work hard to earn, and can quickly loose. MS has worked long and hard to ensure they have as little credibility with technically knowledgeable people as they possibly can. I am /not/ saying that they are always wrong. But you must be very na�ve to assume that what they say is right, without looking for independent confirmation or proof. It is generally true that defragging will be faster if the last time you ran it was a week ago rather than two months ago. But the total time wasted on weekly defrags over those two months is much more than the time wasted for a single defrag once every two months. But whether you do it once a week or every second month, it is still wasted time. You wanted to know the reason newer Windows defaults to auto defragging once a week? It's because lots of people, such as yourself, assume that this is a "new feature" - another "reason" for "upgrading" to Vista / Windows 7. Companies like DiskKeeper have done a great false advertising job persuading people that they need scheduled defragmenters - MS is simply cashing in on their marketing.
From: David Brown on 15 Dec 2009 07:50 Bilky White wrote: > "Rod Speed" <rod.speed.aaa(a)gmail.com> wrote in message > news:7op1bdF3r6cc0U1(a)mid.individual.net... >> >> unless the user >> can detect the difference that defragging makes, there isnt any point >> in doing it. >> > > Wise words. And that is also why you should never bother to change the > oil in your car engine either. Oil changes /do/ make user-detectable changes, albeit over a long time. Defragging doesn't, no matter how long you leave it - except perhaps in that the increased wear and tear on the disk due to unnecessary defragging may lower its lifetime.
From: David Brown on 15 Dec 2009 08:33 Bilky White wrote: > "David Brown" <david(a)westcontrol.removethisbit.com> wrote in message > news:4b278631$0$3882$8404b019(a)news.wineasy.se... >> >> Oil changes /do/ make user-detectable changes, albeit over a long >> time. Defragging doesn't, no matter how long you leave it - except >> perhaps in that the increased wear and tear on the disk due to >> unnecessary defragging may lower its lifetime. > > Thanks David, I just enjoy yanking Rod's chain from time to time, keep > him on his toes :) Fair enough - I can understand that!
From: Bob Willard on 16 Dec 2009 10:03
David Brown wrote: > Don Lope de Aguirre wrote: >> "Rod Speed" <rod.speed.aaa(a)gmail.com> wrote in message >> news:7n6eooF3ibh58U1(a)mid.individual.net... >>> There is no point in furiously defragging anymore. >> >> How about defragging once a month at least? If it is now useless then >> why does both Vista and Win7 have tasks auto set to defrag once per >> week? It seems that Microsoft disagrees with you. > > "Microsoft disagrees with you" is as good an argument as "Kermit the > Frog disagrees with you". There are so many bad choices for defaults in > Windows that this is absolutely no indication that defragging is useful > in general, or useful on a regular basis. > > There are occasional situations where defragging on windows is a good > idea, and it can therefore be useful to have a defragger around. But it > only makes sense to use it when you really need it (for example, to > compact a file system before shrinking a disk partition). I can imagine nasty combinations of workloads and platforms that would make defragging helpful, but they must be really rare now. In a former life (~15 years ago), doing backup from HD=>tape, it was obvious that defragging before starting a backup kept the tape mostly streaming, while skipping the defrag step led to a lot of shoe-shining. That system was a 486/33 with 4MB of RAM, running Win 3.1, with a 3600 RPM non-DMA FAT16 HD, and a QIC (definitely not quick) tape connected over a shared parallel port; and, the (Colorado) backup software was very primitive. In that era, I used to say that any mag.tape had only two speeds: "It streams or it sucks". Over the past dozen or so years, I've never been able to notice any performance gain due to defragging, which is why I always recommend using a defragger which is free: either none, or whatever is bundled with the OS. -- Cheers, Bob |