I’m one of those people who are always trying to get as much power out of their computer as possible. I have two computers that are mine. One is a 2006 laptop, and one is a 2010 desktop with 4 GB’s of ram, and a graphic card. The laptop has about 1GB of ram. I say about because some is used up by the integrated graphics. So, one of the ways I think to get the most out of your computer is to defrag the computer so the files are in the best place so they can get accessed faster.
Well, there are lots of programs out there that claim to defrag, and I have tried most of them. I say most as I am cheap, and this blog doesn’t pay, well, anything, so I can’t really afford to buy different defrag software.
I’ve read some places that some people don’t think you need to defrag because today’s hard drives are so fast and big, it makes little difference. Well, I disagree with that. Today’s operating systems and programs are MUCH bigger than they use to be. They use up more RAM, and thus take longer to load. Windows 7 uses up a lot more than the 4 MB’s that 95 did (or it may have been 8). So, I think the speed is negated by the fact that your computer has a lot more to load today when compared to back in the day. Don’t even get me started on AV solutions. My first 95 machine did not have AV. My windows ME machine did, but the less we talk about ME, the better.
So, there are many programs out there that are free, and claim to defrag your computer. There is a great web site out there for a lot of defrag reviews. If you Google “defrag shoot out” it should be the first one, or one of the top ones. If you want a more in-depth look, go there.
My old standby of MyDefrag is a great program. Its simple, has several settings, and the defrag shoot out guy gave it his award for free. And free is often the best price, at least for me. I’ve used that program for a while, several years, even when it was called JKDefrag. But, lately I have grown concerned about drive wear, and have noticed how much MyDefrag does, and not certain if it is all needed. So, I decided to go out on a search.
One of the programs I tried before was Smart Defrag. It’s gotten better, and was once recommended on TeckZilla, something that surprised me a lot. So, when I started my great search, I treid that one. On windows 7, it does not launch on startup, as I’m rather certain that it needs administrator privileges. Well, windows vista started that, and vista came out several years ago, so the fact that they did not fix that caveat by now is not good. Especially considering one of the things Smart Defrag prides its self on is the automatic defrag, which is more like scheduled defrag that stops when you come back. Its nice, but with having to launch it yourself every time, it can get annoying. So, I dropped that one.
For fun I tried Windows defrag, which in the past has been full of FAIL. But, they say the new one is better, and faster, and doesn’t need multiple runs. That’s good because it takes forever to have it finish. It does several passes, and I don’t think it’s very good. It takes forever, and I recall reading that it doesn’t defrag fragments larger than 64 MB’s because you get no performance gain from it. Well, I want MAXIMUM performance at ALL TIMES so I can spend more time finding funny videos on youtube, and watching anime.
I also tried defraggler, as it is also rather popular. I have one major issue with this one; if you stop it part way through, you have fragments at the end of your hard drive because of the way it does things. I don’t think this is especially good, but I guess it’s ok if you are the kind of person who defrags NOT every day. I am, so this one is not for me, but is ok for the person who wants good performance.
Then I came to auslogics defrag, and that is the one I am using right now. It has defrag in the back ground, and an optimize feature, which is good. I’m not sure I trust the optimize feature as it appears to be placing my steam files at the start of my drive, which is weird. I also like how it has several priority settings, that allow me to continue to use my computer while it is defragging. I haven’t rebooted since I started using it, but I think it will be fine, as I have used it before, and if I recall, it works. I may even put it on my RAM starved laptop, but we shall see.
Defrag is just as important today as it was back in the day, because we are loading more files on our computers to run our applications. But, we do have more RAM which is nice, and our disks are faster, but I don’t think that means we should get lazy.
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