proper defrag?

i'm on a dv7-1170us. it's new as of a couple weeks or so. i haven't defragged a computer in several years. i've read numerous ways to do it, some which don't necessarily work, also people that say after a defrag the computer will have taken of several GB of space. i'd obviously like to do it without that.

 

Its only taking space temporarily as a cache to move files around. You will get it all back as soon as you restart your system.

I highly recommend you use JKDefrag.

 

i tried it and it seemed to automatically start it after analyzing the drive. i x'd out of it. i hope that's not bad for the drive it's just something i want to do before i go to bed. will it complete all on its own or is it going to prompt up any sort of boxes that need clicking? around how long should it take?

 

No its not bad to close it. You just need to run it and it will tell you when its finished. No prompts to click.

JKdefrag doesnt just defrag, it also optimizes your disc for faster loading.

How long it takes depends on how fragmented your drive is. If you have alot of files in your hard drive then it will take anywhere from 30mins to 4hours+.

 

thank you. i'll give it a run tonight.

 

well i ran it. i don't believe i really see any difference in speed. is there anywhere to check what percentage it was at before it actually processed? maybe it didn't need it. i'm also wondering when i should do it again.

 

Okay people - a good kept secret (why I don't know) is the program that us Techs/Engineers use for client system defrag and our own defrags, and that's Diskeeper. If you've never used it, then you're not getting the kind of defrag you really need.

The current version is a new step in defrag operations: Diskeeper 2009 added a thing they call "InvisiTasking", which simply put means that Diskeeper can be set to run as a background process and not as a PIA utility taking up time and resources while you sit on your behind and wait for it to get done 4 hours later. It uses so little resources when running that you don't even know it is unless you check to see if it's running.

It also does defrag operations that native defrag and those other utility defrag's don't - it performs defragging of the disk MFT and Paging file. This cannot be done when Windows is running, which is why most programs don't do it. But can you think of anything on your drive that should be defragged as much as the sector that orders your files? Diskeeper performs that defrag when the system is booted, prior to Windows startup.

Diskeeper can also be scheduled to run at any period you wish, something else many programs can't do. Right now I have a total of 6 HD's connected to my HDX notebook - 2 internal 320gb SATA's, 1 external Maxtor 300gb, 1 external 750gb Maxtor, and 2 Seagate 320gb SSD's. Diskeeper also does defrag operations on SSD's. I didn't include the Flash Drive I've got installed for ReadyBoost - DK also will defrag a Flash Drive.

There arguably is no better defrag program, and it doesn't cost that much considering what it does. I normally use the Auto setting and boot defrag ops for all my drives except for the SSD's, as there are only certain defrag's that need to be done on those.

Diskeeper will also defrag Flash drives as well.

It's available as a full trial version, so no one has any excuse not to give it a try. I've used it for a lot of years, and as one who's been a tech for over 35 years, I can honestly say I've not found a better program for defragging, and I've tried many of them.

Okay, enough plugging - I know it's overkill, but I tend to say a lot about things I know are worth trying and/or buying. Diskeeper is at this link: Diskeeper.com

The version you want to download is Diskeeper 2009 Pro Premier.

I have DK installed on all of my clients' systems as well. You can get it as an Enterprise edition which you can install on many systems and Admin remotely.

 

right pro premier , like the one extra feature is worth $40.00. for most the home edition is fine , pro is more than enough for most .
I've used diskeeper in the past , it is good , but not worth $99.00 . The defragmenter I use now comes with paragon partition manager and does as good a job or better for 1/2 the price and it re sizes disks has a boot manager and will change fat32/16 partitions to ntfs .
and JKdefrag is fine , use it on a few computers as well

 

i got diskeeper. should i just turn on the auto defrag "based on a weekly pattern", or anything else i should know without having to read too much into this?

 

I use the Professional version of Diskeeper 2009 and it's great. It has most of the features that the 2008 ProPremier had, such as i-faast file sequencing.

Burman, I've left mine on auto defrag, and it works fine. Once you run a full defrag including boot-time (for the pagefile/MFT), DK won't need to run for too long daily. You can set up a time slot for it to run in auto mode for an hour daily at the end of the day, or just leave it on full auto mode..it really doesn't matter...chances are that it'll run only for a few mins either way unless your drive has seen GBs worth of file modification that day. But ensure that the option to automatically suspend defrag while on battery power, is enabled (as it ought to be by default).