Can anyone recommend a good (preferably free) defragger for Windows?

[John E]

Under Windows 2000 I've been trying to use the OS's defrag tool to tidy up a hard drive. During the past few days I've tried about 3 times and slowly but surely, my disk (or at least, my files) are becoming less fragmented.

I'm not a great believer in defragging because to be honest, despite the lofty claims made for defragging I've never found it makes any appreciable difference to my system's performance. Having said that, with every other defragger I've used, the ultimate objective seemed to be to get all the free space into a single contiguous block at the end of the disk - even if the files below it were left slightly fragmented. AFAICT though, Windows' own defragger has no such objective. At the end of each operation my free space seems to be left highly fragmented. To me, this seems to be missing the whole point of defragging. Can anyone suggest a better defrag tool? Preferably one that's free!.

[D_Drmmr]

Windows defragmenter doesn't do anything useful. I use O&O defrag 2000 (freeware), which uses a space defragmentation algorithm - the other ones are not free. The best I've used in the past was Norton's defragmenter.

In my experience, it's best to prevent fragmented files, rather than running defragmentation programs, by storing data on separate partitions/disks according to their nature. E.g. downloaded files or intermediate build files are likely to cause large amounts of fragmentation, whereas program files or large data files won't but are susceptible to fragmented free space.

[John E]

In my experience, it's best to prevent fragmented files, rather than running defragmentation programs, by storing data on separate partitions/disks according to their nature.

I must admit, that's become my normal practise too. What happened in this case was that I needed to resize a partition (to make it bigger). After the resize operation I noticed that I didn't have as much free space as I thought I'd end up with. I realise now that this was probably due to the default cluster size getting changed but at first I assumed it might be a fragmentation problem - hence why I defragged the partition.

I think you're right about Norton. Years ago (when I used to trust Symantec) I was always very impressed by Norton's defragger. But I wiped all Symantec stuff off my drive years ago because I became fed up with them constantly demanding upgrade fees for products that I didn't feel any need to upgrade. Haven't used any Norton product at all for well over 5 years. I will take a look at the O&O one though. Thanks for the tip.

[Arjay]

Windows 7 has a pretty good defragger tool and it's free.

[Skizmo]

MyDefrag. Free, simple and works pretty good.

[John E]

O&O DefragLite is running as I write. Slightly worryingly, it seems to have started by "re-defragging" all the files that Windows had already defragged..! So it looks like I might have a long wait on my hands!

I hope the wait is worth it!

[John E]

Bah! It finished the defrag but my free space was still left highly fragmented. I guess that must be the best that can be achieved....

[Skizmo]

but my free space was still left highly fragmented.

Your free space is still fragmented ?

[Arjay]

Your free space is still fragmented ?

I hate when that happens.

[John E]

Yes - it defragged the actual files but then forgot to carry on and defrag the free space! Years ago when I used to use Norton I'm sure it used to move a certain amount of stuff to the end of the drive, then gradually move things 'backwards' to use up the fragmented space. The final result would be that my free space would end up mostly (if not entirely) in one contiguous block at the end of the partition. But neither O&O nor Windows performed that extra crucial step.

[Arjay]

But neither O&O nor Windows performed that extra crucial step.

Keep in mind that the built-in defraggers have improved in the 10 years since Win2000 has been released. It's not really surprising that the built-in tool didn't work all that well back then. If I recall correctly, that version of NTFS was new compared to the previous version that came in NT4. I think back then they were saying that NTFS didn't need defragging so it's not surprising that the defragging tool didn't get much love.

[dglienna]

Diskeeper2010. Best one out there, but, not FREE either.