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[O/C]Realities of Hard Drive Fragmentation

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Realities of Hard Drive Fragmentation
by TollhouseFrank

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 ...
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Perhaps the graphs should be updated. b generally refers to bit, rather than B for Byte, and a 39 megabit read speed is pretty slow :) Also, any chance you could run the test with this defragger?
 
LOL. probably is wrong. I always forget which is which. anyways, soon as I get home from work, i'll check and see if i still have the fully fragged image (i should) and if so, i'll give your defragger a shot and report the findings for ya.

*edit*

Just as an update. The speeds are in Megabytes, not Megabits. If it was Megabits, then i would still be defragging the image... :p
 
Proof is in the pudding as they say :)

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)
 
everything i used was free, and puran defrag USED to be a pay-for program... but is free now.

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.
 
Great job on the article Frank. A lot of work went into this folks, well worth a read if you haven't already!
 
thanks hokie!

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.
 
I am curious how good the Windows 7 defragger is. It seems to take ages, so I'm really curious how well it optimizes the disk.
 
Excellent information. If you have the total run times of all the defrag runs of the different utilities it would be useful to include those too.

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.
 
these results are for 1-and-done defrags. Some of them, once the initial defrag is run, run much faster the next time.

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!
 
just checked. i do have the fully fragged backup image still. if there are additional defraggers you want tested and as long as i can download/use them for free (even if it is a reduced, demo mode), then get me the link and i'll test them and post them up for ya.
 
Perfect Disk is what I've used for years, always had good results with it. I'd be interested in seeing how it stacks up to the others in your test.

You can get a trial from their site here.
 
Defrag Express Settings:
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
 
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Diskeeper 2010 settings:
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
 
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