We have all heard that defragmenting a hard drive (HDD) can give you a boost in performance. Is this just a an old wive’s tale or is it grounded in reality?
Most of us, whether we are top-notch IT talent or just a regular Joe or somewhere in between know that taking care of a computer and doing some basic upkeep can keep it running at a decent clip. Defragmenting a HDD is one of those basics that we should all do and has been so since well, mechanical HDDs came into existence. However, is this just good housekeeping practice based on actual results, or is it just one of those myths about what to do with your computer to keep it running well?
The Test Setup
To set this test up and to keep it fair, I am using VirtualBox. The image I built is based off of Windows XP SP3 in a 14.9gb image. I downloaded and installed all possible windows updates (critical or not) from Microsoft as of 02/08/2010 . I then installed MS Office 2007 and downloaded all the updates for it. I then uninstalled office and the updates for office.  I then copied many photos to and from the drive. I then removed every other photo (over 2,000 photos), then installed Microsoft Office 2007 and downloaded the updates for it again. I then deleted all of the photos. I then used a program called Fragger to purposely fragment the rest of the drive (fragger wrote 5,706mb of pure fragmentation to the image). I then installed all of the softwares to be used in this test (the defragmenters) so they would be preinstalled on the backup image. I then used the function built into VirtualBox to make a backup image of the virtual machine so that I could restore from that backup for the purpose that each defragmenter has a fair chance on the same exact fragmented dataset.
To start things off, I needed to find some sort of baseline for performance. After doing much searching, I settled on a free tool called HDTune. It isn’t as full featured as the full pay-version of the program, but for the purposes of these tests, it was more than enough. It gave me 4 readings that I felt were the most relevant to the tests I was doing: Minimum Read Speed, Maximum Read Speed, Average Read Speed, and Access Time.
I did not measure defragmentation time as I started each of them defragmenting before i went to bed each night, so time didn’t matter to me. I would like to go ahead and say that I feel it is safe to assume most others do something similar. With defragmentation being something that should be done at least, in my opinion, once a month, it will tend to be something that is set to be done while the pc is not in use, like during the night while you are sleeping, thus why I tested in this manner.
I then found myself ready to run the tests. Then the bright idea occurred to me: Maybe Virtual Box will have a massive impact on the tests, so I need to have a comparison of my HDDs read speed outside of Virtual Box and inside of it. So, I ran those tests. I then decided that once I ran all the tests, I would use the winner of the tests and defragment my harddrive (previously defragmented with MyDefrag before building the Virtual Box image) to see if it improved things any, especially after deleting and restoring multiple 15gb images in the process of the tests.
The version of Virtual Box used in this test was Virtual Box 3.0.12r54655. The HDD that I am using and got the original base results to compare against is a ST3250410AS with Windows XP installed on it. Also, where needed, I will note what options I used with each defragmenter in an attempt to get the ‘most’ out of the program.
The Defraggers
- Windows XP Default Defragmenter
- MyDefrag 4.2.7
- Defraggler 1.16.165
- Puran Defrag Free 7.0
- Auslogics Defrag 3.1.2.90
- Vopt 9.21
The Results Inside of Virtual Box
The first thing I needed to do inside of Virtual Box was to get a baseline reading that I could compare against. The first reading I took was just after installing Windows XP SP3 and all of the updates – critical or not – available at the time. This would represent the fresh system install speed that we all know and love so well. The results are as follows:
| Minimum Speed (Mb/s) | Maximum Speed (Mb/s) | Average Speed (Mb/s) | Average Access Time (ms) |
| 0.7 | 58.6 | 39.2 | 25.6 |
I then needed a baseline test after all the work I put into purposely fragmenting the image, the results of which are below. What was surprising to me was how far the average read speed fell.
| Minimum Speed (Mb/s) | Maximum Speed (Mb/s) | Average Speed (Mb/s) | Average Access Time (ms) |
| 4.9 | 57.7 | 31 | 13 |
Now, for a baseline defragmentation, and the standard against which all the other defragmenters in this roundup will be measured, I ran the built in defragmenter that comes standard with WindowsXP. The results that came back were very surprising, which when I ran this, gave me great hope for what the others might be able to accomplish as they are all touted as ‘better’ than the default built into windows.
| Minimum Speed (Mb/s) | Maximum Speed (Mb/s) | Average Speed (Mb/s) | Average Access Time (ms) |
| 5.7 | 59 | 50.6 | 7.5 |
3rd Party Defraggers
Now, with that as a nice set of baselines to compare against, I then went on with the rest of the tests. After every time that I restored the image, I would then defrag the image, reboot it, then run the tests. The next results are of my defragger of choice (before i ran these tests). After the tests, will it still remain my favorite? We shall see. The next results are for MyDefrag. For options, I chose Defrag Monthly for the most thorough defrag.
| Minimum Speed (Mb/s) | Maximum Speed (Mb/s) | Average Speed (Mb/s) | Average Access Time (ms) |
| 22.4 | 204.8 | 67.9 | 8.4 |
These results had me excited. That big of a boost over the default defragger aside from Access Time (which would prove to be the only thing that the XP Defragger was better at in the end, to only slightly spoil the results).  However, with these results in, it was now on to the next defragger: Defraggler by Piriform. For options, I chose – Move Large Files to End of Drive.
| Minimum Speed (Mb/s) | Maximum Speed (Mb/s) | Average Speed (Mb/s) | Average Access Time (ms) |
| 23.5 | 206.6 | 68 | 8.2 |
The next candidate up for testing is one that I found quite by accident while looking over slickdeals.net for some deals on Steam. Puran Defrag is a program that used to be payed-for software that is now freeware. I decided to give it a chance in this roundup to see if a ‘payed for’ style program was worth the money it used to cost. The option I chose on this one was to use the setting: Boost overall system speed by Puran Intelligent Optimize
| Minimum Speed (Mb/s) | Maximum Speed (Mb/s) | Average Speed (Mb/s) | Average Access Time (ms) |
| 1.3 | 207 | 50.9 | 8.6 |
Then, the next test was on to a program I had used in the past, then decided to stop using once I found MyDefrag (formerly JKDefrag) as it didn’t feel as fast after defrags. Would this test bear that out? The options I chose for this one were: remove temp files before defragmenting, move system files to beginning of disk, defrag and optimize
| Minimum Speed (Mb/s) | Maximum Speed (Mb/s) | Average Speed (Mb/s) | Average Access Time (ms) |
| 5.4 | 206.8 | 58.9 | 9.0 |
Then, the final program in our roundup was suggested to me by fellow forum member C627627. Vopt was a program I had never heard of, but since it was a free download, I decided to add it to the test and to see how effective it was. The options I chose that were available to me in this one were: tighter packing, move system restore to end of drive.
| Minimum Speed (Mb/s) | Maximum Speed (Mb/s) | Average Speed (Mb/s) | Average Access Time (ms) |
| 19.7 | 202.7 | 57.9 | 9.3 |
The Results Outside of Virtual Box
Before doing the battery of tests that I did, and knowing what would happen to my HDD after deleting and restoring a 15gb image file over and over, I ran a preliminary speed test on my HDD to see what the transfer rate was outside of Virtual Box so that I could see what the affects of running the tests inside of Virtual Box would be, if any affect. Those results are below.
| Minimum Speed (Mb/s) | Maximum Speed (Mb/s) | Average Speed (Mb/s) | Average Access Time (ms) |
| 4.7 | 81.8 | 73 | 15.3 |
I then decided that for a final bit to test my drive to see if the overall results winner actually improved anything, I used Defraggler with the same options as in the Virtual Box test, then ran HDTune one last time.
| Minimum Speed (Mb/s) | Maximum Speed (Mb/s) | Average Speed (Mb/s) | Average Access Time (ms) |
| 52.1 | 81.8 | 74 | 15.2 |
So, even though the improvements were minimal aside from minimum speed, it still improved over even the MyDefrag results before all the other tests.
Results Summary
Minimum Read Speed (Higher is better)
Maximum Read Speed (Higher is better)
Average Read Speed (Higher is better)
Access Time (Lower is better)
Conclusions
With the results of the tests in, it seems the ‘old wive’s tale’ of defragmenting your HDD to maintain performance is not only true, the results of it were astounding. Even if you don’t use a 3rd party defragger, the tool built into Windows itself gives a massive boost in performance.
I do realize that these results are only for my machine and specific for only a virtual machine inside of Virtual Box. Even as that may be, I feel there are two 3rd party defraggers I can confidently recommend to anyone to use on their machines as their results are so similar, and the overall increase in speed is different by only 0.1Mb/s.
So, congratulations are in order for MyDefrag 4.2.7 and Piriform Defraggler 1.16.165!
Related posts:
- Windows 7 Virtual XP
- Revo Uninstaller – A Freeware Gem
- 3DMark2003
- Gadwin Printscreen Freeware Screen Capture Program
Tags: auslogics defrag, defrag, defraggler, fragment, hard disk drive, hard drive, hdd, hdtune, my defrag, puran defrag, vopt
02-17-10 01:56 PM
02-17-10 02:38 PM
*edit*
Just as an update. The speeds are in Megabytes, not Megabits. If it was Megabits, then i would still be defragging the image...
02-17-10 02:55 PM
I like O&O defrag utility. It is not free but it is REALLY fast with lots of options for defragging. Based on stealth (not fast but you can use the PC while it runs) to access, (which puts all the most commonly accessed files at the beginning of a drive)
02-17-10 02:59 PM
And you are right. Proof is in the pudding. I personally didn't think there would be such a gap between the built-in default defragger in windows vs. the others. I figured they would be a little faster, not a lot faster as they all seemed to turn out, except for puran which compared to the default defragger, is a wash.
02-17-10 03:10 PM
02-17-10 03:16 PM
I'm hoping this article will help out a lot of people, not only here, but all across the spectrum of the IT world, from regular Joes to SysAdmins and everyone in between.
02-17-10 03:26 PM
02-17-10 03:50 PM
02-17-10 03:54 PM
02-17-10 04:08 PM
I've used MyDegfrag for some time now and I can say for certain that the Monthly defrag strategy is very complete but it can also take forever to run. I use a modified daily/weekly strategy myself.
02-17-10 04:15 PM
02-17-10 04:21 PM
For example, Defraggler and MyDefrag both took close to 5 1/2 hours to finish... and from my prior experience with both, the next run is 'near instant'... like, 5-10 minutes.
However, this test wasn't designed to test how fast the job got done, just how fast the results were once it got done.
Thanks for the comments guys!
02-17-10 04:31 PM
02-18-10 12:05 AM
02-18-10 12:13 AM
You can test it using a 30-45 day free trial.
Edit: http://www.diskeeper.com/
02-18-10 12:33 AM
You can get a trial from their site here.
02-18-10 04:47 AM
Background File Placement Optimization (Boot Optimize) disabled - The Program suggests doing this so I'm doing this one.
Thorough - Fast Consolidate, Move Directories close to MFT, Move frequently used files to high performance area.
Results:
Minimum Speed - 1.8MB/sec
Maximum Speed - 200.1MB/sec
Average Speed - 64.3MB/sec
Access Time - 18ms
02-18-10 06:02 AM
None. Left at defaults from install.
Results:
Minimum Speed - 0.8/sec
Maximum Speed - 202.3/sec
Average Speed - 58.2/sec
Access Time - 18.6ms
02-18-10 08:55 AM
02-18-10 09:10 AM
So, unfortunately, your test results prove nothing other than the margin of error involved in measuring a hard drive performance when there are other system processes running.
I have not used VirtualBox, and you have not explained how Virtualbox maps its image sectors to the drive image it created; or whether the 15GB image, once restored in each case, was fragmented or not.
HDTune was not designed to be run inside a virtual environment, so I don't see how you could rely on it for accurate measurements.
Your tests need to read the speed with which a FILE can be read, not a hard drive sector. HDTune reads sectors.
02-18-10 09:31 AM
02-18-10 09:42 AM
So, unfortunately, your test results prove nothing other than the margin of error involved in measuring a hard drive performance when there are other system processes running.
I have not used VirtualBox, and you have not explained how Virtualbox maps its image sectors to the drive image it created; or whether the 15GB image, once restored in each case, was fragmented or not.
HDTune was not designed to be run inside a virtual environment, so I don't see how you could rely on it for accurate measurements.
Your tests need to read the speed with which a FILE can be read, not a hard drive sector. HDTune reads sectors.
Any test that actually reads files, writes files etc using a batch script or some other type of benchmark would have been better. PCMark tests the disc, doesn't it?
02-18-10 10:29 AM
SSD > Life
02-18-10 10:31 AM
I haven't personally investigated this, but trusting your word as I don't have time to verify right now, let's assume we should use something else. Do you suggest a more appropriate tool?
Also, everything considered here is free, does perfectdisk offer a free version? (EDIT: It appears a 30day trial is available, I'm not familiar if any of the items considered in this article are trialware)
The great part about having community input is that we get good review of our articles. Hashing it out and making the corrections is not a problem - our goal is to relay good information. Overclockers has always been about free speech and publishing reader and member generated content, so anyone can respond in comments or in article form to keep everyone on their toes.
02-18-10 10:54 AM
02-18-10 12:21 PM
02-18-10 01:18 PM
Might provide better results than HDtune.
02-18-10 01:30 PM
What I am not sure of it how the fragmentation inside the virtual drive relates to the fragmentation of the virtual-drive-file and what exactly the defragmenters do when they defragment inside a VM.
02-18-10 01:52 PM
Just so any future readers know, I know that access time is a crucial part of defragmentation. However, i felt that a few milliseconds would be unnoticed compared to how fast it takes to read the file once it is found on the drive.
But again, if my methods are flawed, or if they are good but the tests are flawed, I am willing to accept that I made a big boo-boo and redo the tests after a method that can be agreed upon by me and a few others behind-the scenes can be found.
I don't feel it would ruin anything to say that Puran already contacted me with suggestions to improve my methods, to which I replied with some questions of my own. Even if this takes a while before I can retest, I will do the tests again if it is decided there is a better method to do this.
02-18-10 01:56 PM
What I am not sure of it how the fragmentation inside the virtual drive relates to the fragmentation of the virtual-drive-file and what exactly the defragmenters do when they defragment inside a VM.
This may be true. I am not quite sure how it does so, but I know the image is 3 parts. 1 part is a config file (just a few kb in size), the other i'm not sure what it is, but it's just a few kb is size, and then the image file which is 14.9gb in size, as it's own seperate file on the drive.
02-18-10 04:21 PM
I am curious to see how UltraDefrag does in this test, since I keep hearing people mention it lately due to it being open source: http://ultradefrag.sourceforge.net/
Issues with the testing:
- The test setup seems a artificial, but was definitely a good and well-documented attempt to at least set up *something* useful.
- I don't see how deleting and restoring one large file over and over is going to have any effect on fragmentation of other files.
I've been using MyDefrag, but it's slow and doesn't do boot-time defragging. Maybe Defraggler or UltraDefrag would be a better choice.
02-18-10 04:41 PM
http://software.bootblock.co.uk/?id=fragger
02-18-10 05:02 PM
http://software.bootblock.co.uk/?id=fragger
02-18-10 05:32 PM
these tests were in an artificial environment. This was designed as semi-theorycrafting and mostly to see which defragger 'put humpty dumpty back together again'.
Currently am researching other tools to test HD performance to see if I can get more useful data and update the article.
02-18-10 05:43 PM
One thing I would personally like to see is what are the real life benefits of this? The easiest to test would be boot times. Another idea that came to mind are file transfers before and after.
02-18-10 05:48 PM
these tests were in an artificial environment. This was designed as semi-theorycrafting and mostly to see which defragger 'put humpty dumpty back together again'.
Currently am researching other tools to test HD performance to see if I can get more useful data and update the article.
02-18-10 06:48 PM
One thing I would personally like to see is what are the real life benefits of this? The easiest to test would be boot times. Another idea that came to mind are file transfers before and after.
02-18-10 07:12 PM
If I were in your shoes, I would look to see, somehow, how those things are tested and apply that.
02-18-10 07:13 PM
02-18-10 07:17 PM
Thanks Pettey. I will definitely look into that this weekend after my daughter goes back to her mother (it's my weekend with my daughter and i plan to enjoy every second of it with her).
I believe that in order to do this again, I need to rebuild the fragmented image to include the other defraggers listed in response to this, plus the IOZone software, i'll also leave in HDTune just to see if it really is showing the true speed difference, and I'm looking for one more benchmarking software for this, though i'm leaning towards PCMark, i'm not sure which version i should use (one of the free versions, obviously) that would measure what i'm looking for, raw speed before and after.
02-18-10 07:19 PM
02-18-10 10:33 PM
It is also important to know what file system was defragmentation attempted on.
The above herein this post notwithstanding, the, not so unfamiliar, latency (access time)/throughput (average read speed) correlation seems to exist. (That is, latency can be sacrificed (increased) to acquire greater throughput; throughput can be sacrificed (decreased) to acquire lesser latency)
02-19-10 12:39 AM
Thanks for the article, gave me the motivation to defrag!
02-19-10 12:52 AM
Thanks for the article, gave me the motivation to defrag!
Same here.
02-19-10 08:51 AM
It is also important to know what file system was defragmentation attempted on.
The above herein this post notwithstanding, the, not so unfamiliar, latency (access time)/throughput (average read speed) correlation seems to exist. (That is, latency can be sacrificed (increased) to acquire greater throughput; throughput can be sacrificed (decreased) to acquire lesser latency)
However, just for the sake of making sure I don't miss anything, I'll use both of those in the next round of tests.
02-19-10 09:53 AM
I haven't read it yet since it's blocked by websense on my current network, but Donn who posted earlier has some material that may be helpful, though his goals with his article were different:
http://donnedwards.openaccess.co.za/...t-winners.html
02-19-10 10:30 AM
The other 50% is finding software that will measure what I'm trying to measure and testing it to see if it works the way I want it to work.
02-19-10 10:44 AM
02-19-10 01:12 PM
It's one thing to make a backup of a VM. It's another to do a backup of a whole OS disk. I need to make sure that whatever I use to do the backups is free and doesn't mess with the dataset.
02-19-10 01:41 PM
02-19-10 01:50 PM
02-19-10 03:33 PM
02-22-10 08:46 PM
If you are using a VM to test with you are essentially using a single file as the virtual file system. This in effect would be similar to short stroking a drive. So if that VM file is 15 gigs on an 80 gig drive then you are going to be limited to the a theoretical max transfer speed depending on where that 15 gig file resides on the 80 gig drive... (and if you are deleting and coping it back every time you start a new test that might cause issues with fragmentation of the file itself...)
I would think in order for the test to be valid you could not use it inside a VM. Or at best if you did, you would be testing the impact of fragmentation on the VM itself. (And either way this is what needs to happen in order to form the baseline image: )
Like several others have said you have to copy the bits. Or more exactly you need to sector copy the initial image. This would give you a consistent starting point to measure from each time. If you simply copies the VM file back to the drive you may end up with file fragmentation. Or if you made an image of the system it would probably defrag itself during the creation/restore process. (I know Ghost used to work like that for a standard disc clone.) I would also install all of the test programs first to minimize changes to the initial image as much as possible.
If we going more for a copy/move/creation type of test setup, having a second drive as the frag drive might be a good idea. Instead of using/copying a whole OS, just have a secondary data drive be the fragmented one. While it wouldn't give you as tactile results as restoring the OS each time it would be somewhat easier.
Don't want to rain on any parades, but just wanted to point out that you could have fragmentation inside fragmentation....
02-23-10 12:03 AM
When using a file to represent a storage device, much time is spent . When the represented information becomes fragmented, it often is necessary to defragment three times to defragment a virtual machine and its represented information in a timely manner: first the container file is defragmented, then the represented information (operating system, virtual files, etc.) are defragmented, then the container file is defragmented again (after becoming fragmented by the defragmentation of the virtual content).
A VMWare virtual machine may be set to use a physical disc instead of a file to store the virtual content.
I have never used nor have examined VirtualBox.
02-23-10 12:12 AM
Assuming a properly configured virtual disk on the host, there are 2 possible fragmentation scenarious when using a VM with a virtualized disk. This file can be fragmented on the host, which can be resolved by defragmenting the host system. The guest can experience fragmentation within this file, which is resolved by defragmenting from within the guest.
02-23-10 04:09 AM
Fragmentation of the host system file system (including files to store virtual machine information). This fragmentation may be defragmented on the host system by using a defragmentation tool.
Fragmentation of the content of host file storing a guest (virtual) system. Defragmenting the contents of the host file may be performed using a utility provided by the virtualization software vendor/owner (may be incorporated into main virtualization software).
Fragmentation of the guest (virtual) system file system. This fragmentation may be defragmented by deframenting the guest (virtual) system file system from the running guest system. Defragmenting a guest file system fragments the host file storing the guest (virtual) system.
It is possible for the virtual (guest) system host file to be unfragmented on the host system, but fragmented within.
02-23-10 09:25 AM
You cannot defragment a virtualdisk file on the host, unless you are using growable/sparse disks on vmware.
This document reflects the idea you have:
http://www.vmware.com/support/ws55/d...sk_defrag.html
What it does not state, is that you cannot defragment a preallocated virtual disk file:
Additionally, notice how this defragmentation tip for vmware focuses on growable disks (or sparse virtual disks, same thing, different terminology):
http://blogs.vmware.com/teamfusion/2...fragmenta.html
So if you are using a sparse virtual disk, which is default in vmware fusion, then your defragmentation is a 3 part process. The only advantage of using sparse virtual disk is that your VM's will take up less space on the host system - the tradeoff is non-optimal performance and more complicated defragmentation. For anyone else who is preallocating the disk space for the VM, a 2 step defragmentation on the host and guest is all that is required.
02-24-10 02:37 AM
You cannot defragment a virtualdisk file on the host, unless you are using growable/sparse disks on vmware.
This document reflects the idea you have:
http://www.vmware.com/support/ws55/d...sk_defrag.html
What it does not state, is that you cannot defragment a preallocated virtual disk file:
Source: http://www.vmware.com/support/ws55/d..._examples.html
Additionally, notice how this defragmentation tip for vmware focuses on growable disks (or sparse virtual disks, same thing, different terminology):
http://blogs.vmware.com/teamfusion/2...fragmenta.html
So if you are using a sparse virtual disk, which is default in vmware fusion, then your defragmentation is a 3 part process. The only advantage of using sparse virtual disk is that your VM's will take up less space on the host system - the tradeoff is non-optimal performance and more complicated defragmentation. For anyone else who is preallocating the disk space for the VM, a 2 step defragmentation on the host and guest is all that is required.
I have noticed that Virtual Machine host file is defragmentable when the options are used.
I note that I do sometimes make virtual machine snapshots. This seems to add large files for which the size of the aggregate is less than the size of the original virtual host file(s). Perhaps this may be considered a "growth".
03-08-10 11:37 AM
I never knew that there was a myth about defragging. It has always been proven since windows 98, that defragging speeds up file access and booting... Just wish there was a way to track it and test each file...for real world proof...
03-19-10 08:53 AM
If anyone wants to pick up defraggler, you can get it here
06-01-10 12:10 AM
Well done - thanks for being so generous with your time & energy to share the results of your defrag testing
I appreciate that the methodology is still being tweaked & the need for that discussion - but thought this summary of the results of your tests might be helpful (please let me know if anything needs correcting here):
Defraggers initially tested (reported 18/2/2010):
* Windows XP Default Defragmenter
* MyDefrag 4.2.7
* Defraggler 1.16.165
* Puran Defrag Free 7.0
* Auslogics Defrag 3.1.2.90
* Vopt 9.21
Best overall results: MyDefrag 4.2.7 & Piriform Defraggler 1.16.165
Also tested:
* Defrag Express
* Diskeeper 2010
(if I understood the results correctly MyDefrag & Defraggler still rate best)
Would there be any significant difference in results between MyDefrag 4.2.7 & MyDefragGUI 2.1 ?
----
Now here are a list of defrag wares that would be worth testing (though some may be trial versions - not sure if all of these are freeware):
* Auslogics Disk Defrag (been getting a good rap on other forums)
* IObit Smart Defrag (quite popular so worth testing)
* Vista & Windows 7 Defrag (goes without saying)
* O&O Defrag (requested by other members in thread)
* Perfect Disk (requested by other members in thread)
* UltraDefrag (requested by other members in thread)
If anyone out there knows of any other worthy freeware defraggers then please advise!
06-01-10 12:12 AM
My spec's are: HP Pavilion DV9520TX with Intel C2D T7500 2.2GHz, 4GB RAM, Vista OS & all wares on 160GB HDD & all music & docs on 500GB HDD
06-29-10 11:09 PM
Well done - thanks for being so generous with your time & energy to share the results of your defrag testing
I appreciate that the methodology is still being tweaked & the need for that discussion - but thought this summary of the results of your tests might be helpful (please let me know if anything needs correcting here):
Defraggers initially tested (reported 18/2/2010):
* Windows XP
Default Defragmenter
* MyDefrag 4.2.7
* Defraggler 1.16.165
* Puran Defrag Free 7.0
* Auslogics Defrag 3.1.2.90
* Vopt 9.21
Best overall results: MyDefrag 4.2.7 & Piriform Defraggler 1.16.165
Also tested:
* Defrag Express
* Diskeeper 2010
(if I understood the results correctly MyDefrag & Defraggler still rate best)
Would there be any significant difference in results between MyDefrag 4.2.7 & MyDefragGUI 2.1 ?
----
Now here are a list of defrag wares that would be worth testing (though some may be trial versions
- not sure if all of these are freeware):
* Auslogics Disk Defrag (been getting a good rap on other forums)
* IObit Smart Defrag (quite popular so worth testing)
* Vista & Windows 7 Defrag (goes without saying)
* O&O Defrag (requested by other members in thread)
* Perfect Disk (requested by other members in thread)
* UltraDefrag (requested by other members in thread)
If anyone out there knows of any other worthy freeware defraggers then please advise!
06-30-10 09:48 AM
06-30-10 10:47 AM
06-30-10 11:06 AM
07-16-10 01:36 PM
Are these results still relevant?
Has the Windows 7 defrag utility been improved over XP?
Have any of these 3rd party defraggers been updated to increase performance?
07-16-10 03:04 PM
If anyone is interested in doing the legwork involved with that after submitting a methodology which we've reviewed and approved, we'd be happy to publish updated results.
07-17-10 07:29 PM
i'm so ashamed... my os drive was at 26% and the data drive was at 38%. BAD NERD!