Defrag Your Hard Drive - Comments Page 1

I just wanted to add that if you have Vista you don't get the visual indication of how the defrag is going which can be initially be confusing and frustrating. The first few times I tried to defrag using a new computer with Vista I nearly tore my hair out with frustration, assuming it wasn't working. Eventually I Googled an article which not only explained why defrag is different in Vista but how to do a "manual defrag" using command lines to gain a bit more control and get some feedback. http://www.howtohaven.com/system/vistadefragmentation.shtml

My favourite defragmenting application is Raxco's PerfectDisk 2008 -- http://www.raxco.com

I tried the latest version of Diskeeper 08 and its great on drives that are running out of free space. The other features also seem to work cool. Definitely recommend it.

With the advent of automatic defragmenters, manual or scheduled defragging has become pretty much obsolete. The automatic defragmenters defrag the drive(s) in the background in real-time intelligently utilizing only free system resources. This means that the drives are always in great shape without any effort on the users' part.

I see this as a welcome change from the past: PC 'maintenance' should be as automatic as possible so Windows users' time on the computer is spent more productively ie. for work/gaming/entertainment etc., rather than on fixing or optimizing it.

EDITOR'S NOTE: I agree. Too bad no such feature is built into Windows, Mac or Linux operating systems. That's why I mentioned the commercial alternatives.

When I turn my computer on it starts up fine, but after a short period of time it just turns off with no warning. It started doing this after I scaned with ad aware and avg. Avg found some stuff and said it took care of the items. I then started clean disk and defraged the computer. i dont think it ever finished the defrage or clean disk. The last couple of time I tryed to defrag is when it is shutting down.

EDITOR'S NOTE: You'll find a lot of help here: http://askbobrankin.com/computer_shuts_down_by_itself.html

I suggest you have a look at JkDefrag.exe at http://www.kessels.com/JkDefrag/. It's free, simple, and works well.

I confess I find the displays produced by defraggers somehow restful and hynoptic. I regret that the XP Defraggers doesn't show the blocks moving like older versions did.

Back to the point:
Does anyone know of a defragger which can handle the swap file and/or other "immovable" files? On my disk I suspect that these are spread around in away which is stopping optimisation of my rather large mail database.

I vaguely remember that there's something you can do with the Auslogics defragger (http://www.auslogics.com/disk-defrag)
to handle such files, but I can't verify it for you. Which brings me to my question: Does anyone know of a free defragger for OS X, or perhaps some way of optimizing the disk from Disk Utility or Terminal? (The Drive Genius trial did let me know how badly fragmented the drive was, but then wanted money -- AFTER I restarted from backup..., and Onyx doesn't do it any more.)

There is a defragmenter available, free of charge, called Auslogics Disk Defragmenter. It is good to look at, is very fast, and works perfectly with Vista Home Premium. In short, it is all you would need from a defragmenter

I note that the instructions you gave for Defrag are for XP Bob? Unfortunately, as you are no doubt aware, there is no way with Vista we can get the 'analyze' button or defrag screen, Microsoft has seen fit to hide it from us. So, trusting the program, I scheduled the defragmenter to run every month at a certain time, and assumed, even though the computer didn't slow down at all during the time
the computer was supposedly defragging, that it was doing the job. WRONG!! I downloaded Auslogics defragger after having talked to another Vista user, and discovered on running the Auslogics program, that my computer had never defragged. Just a warning for other Vista users out there.