- Defragmentation speed improved by up to 30%.
- Optimized free space algorithms.
- Re-architected scheduling manager.
- Improved the fragmentation calculation during Defragmentation.
- Fixed keyboard support for scheduler.
- Minor UI tweaks.

http://www.piriform.com/defraggler/download/portable

Thanks ... and updated

Thanks ReadOnly.

On maybe a separate topic, dramatic speed improvements seem to be important in the actively developed defrag programs I've seen lately. UltraDefrag for example distributes multiple distributions based on processor to maximize speed.

I'm not doubting that Piriform puts out good software, but I'm wondering if speed-of-optimization is really the key feature of interest for defrag programs. I liked for example how MyDefrag (not portable) has multiple different profiles based on time frame. So a daily, weekly, and monthly algorithm. There's also Smart Defrag which supposedly puts the most used files on the inner ring of the drive, making accessing them much faster.

Unfortunately, that appeals to what I think I know about drive fragmentation on FAT/NTFS-formatted drives. Does anyone really know anything about this? At this point I'm using Ultra Defrag because its open source.

(I realize this may be a non-problem ... any advantages of one defragmented hard drive over another are going to be milliseconds difference anyway, I'm just curious.)

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Well, what do you want to know?

I use MyDefrag because it optimizes disk layout a lot (see the list at the end of the MyDefrag homepage), probably more than any other program. Heavy optimization slows defragging down, though.

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Mainly: what is the best defrag program you can use and why? Additionally (on the why question), how would someone go about determining the best possible optimization method? I don't see reviews really looking at that -- they mostly focus on the interface and other goodies like zapping temp files or boot-time optimization.

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YMMV. Defrag programs have their strengths and weaknesses. Some people prefer features (such as individual file defragmentation), some heavy optimization that gives you as much performance as possible, some fast optimization that completes quickly.



I'm afraid the only way to determine that is to review the claims on the websites of defrag programs. I'm not aware of any testing program that'd allow you to measure the differences between programs. (Existing benchmarks such as CrystalDiskMark don't simulate real world usage, so they are only suitable for hardware benchmarking.)

For example, here I review a claim at the MyDefrag website:



If MyDefrag can do that, it will indeed increase speed a lot. If files accessed at the same time (such as data files used by same program) are spread very far from each other, the hard drive needs to perform long and slow seeks which take much more time than actually reading the files. On the other hand, if the files are in close proximity, the seeks are very short (and fast) or even nonexistent (if all the files are in the same track).

In addition, MyDefrag should be able to do that. The Prefetch feature of Windows keeps track of files which each program accesses on startup, so that the files can be cached when the program starts up and the program can access them faster. MyDefrag should be able to parse files used by Prefetch and therefore find out which files should be placed close to each other.

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