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Papirex

Aug 7, 2009, 8:49 AM

Post #1 of 3 (1459 views)

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Disk defragmenter

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For anyone that likes to keep their computer tuned up, you might want to try this disk defragmentation program.

I downloaded the Auslogistics disk defragmenter. It is freeware. The disk defragmenter in Vista is terrible, It is slow as hell, taking almost two hours to complete, and there is no progress bar at all. It is so slow that I minimize it to the taskbar so I can do other things instead of staring at it for hours. The only way to tell if it has finished, it to maximize it from the taskbar once in a while and if it says defragmenting, it isn't done, when it says your disk will be defragged on the schedule you have set, it is finished.

You might want to try this one from PC Pitstop: http://www.auslogics.com/en/software/disk-defrag It will work in Vista, XP, etc. It is much faster than the defragger in XP, it took a little less than 3 minutes to finish defragmenting the 250 GB hard drive in my new Vista laptop, and usually 1 minute for the 80 GB hard drive in my XP laptop, the Microsoft defragger usually takes between 15 and 30 minutes in my XP laptop.

Auslogistics does have a progress display showing the percentage completed. I had run the Vista defragmenter already on my newest laptop, and after I installed and ran the Auslogistics defragmenter for the first time a few hours later, it found and corrected 121 fragments that Microsoft had missed. The Vista computer is noticeably faster now, not much, but noticeable.

A small box pops up when a scan is finished, it lists the number of fragments found, etc. It is so fast that I usually run it 2 or 3 times consecutively. The second scan will usually show a very few fragments that were missed on the first defragmentation scan. If I run it a third time, there has always been zero fragments left. The second or third scan, if I run them, are usually completed in less than one minute, just about 30 seconds usually.

Rex

"The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved" - Victor Hugo

RickS

Aug 7, 2009, 4:11 PM

Post #2 of 3 (1431 views)

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Re: [Papirex] Disk defragmenter

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Thanks, Rex.

I ran it on my older Dell with a 40GB drive which is 2/3 full. Took 17:21 minutes. Ran it again with no improvement. I had run the Windows defrag 1-2 months ago and, like you said, it took quite a while.... certainly longer than 17 minutes. With this time improvement I'll run it more often now.

Thanks again.

Papirex

Aug 13, 2009, 7:13 AM

Post #3 of 3 (1338 views)

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Re: [RickS] Disk defragmenter

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After using it for a week, I did some configuration this morning. If you open the program, you can click on the settings button on the top of the page and enable auto defragmentation daily, weekly, or monthly. There are some default settings which you may change to the times you believe your computer will be running, etc. and to pause defragmenting when disk usage reaches a certain percentage. That will probably be a useful feature for older computers with slower processors.

I will run the program manually once in a while to check my disks and try to determine if the auto defragmentation is doing a good job, if is is, it will be one less thing that I will need to remember to do.

Rex

"The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved" - Victor Hugo