Window's Defrag or Norton System work's Speed disk?

[eyimbo]

As you can see in the subject it'sw hard to decide. But unless i'm missing something, none of these two actually Defrag the Disk a 100% I.E. no Perfect Picture when defrag finishes. have we got any pros on this subject.

P.S. i'm running a Pair of WD 800JS 80GB sata on Raid 0, doggy, but i can't afford another 2 more drives for 0+1

P.P.S. Who's Tom? Anyone have a pic?

 

[hubbardt]

Personally I use O&O defrag and am happy with it but all I could say is try both and see which one suits you best (quickest/best at defrag ...)

Sorry for the lame answer but there is no best option.

Click me for pictures of Tom
Tom

 

[apache_lives]

Windows defrag does what is says - defrags the hdd, where as norton speed disk will defrag AND rearange your files for faster load/boot times by rearanging everything into one area rather then all over the place.

Personally i use VoptXP - it drags everything and aranges it neatly, i can actually see the results, and its a light and easy program to use (i sound like im selling the dam thing now).

 

[INeedCache]

If you're using a Norton antivirus solution the speed you get from the files being rearranged neatly will be cancelled out by their overbloated antivirus software sapping your resources.

 

[woodchuk]

Windows defrag does what is says - defrags the hdd, where as norton speed disk will defrag AND rearange your files for faster load/boot times by rearanging everything into one area rather then all over the place.

I tried O&O and it did seem to do a more thorough job. I know if you disable System Restore and pagefile Windows Defrag will do those like O&O. I just couldn't notice any difference in performance (I defrag once a day usually) and it takes under a minute. But the Norton had lots of adverse side effects.
Doesn't Windows defrag rearrange files for load/boot tho? I thot XP did just that with NTFS. I should add my C drive I only keep 10% full anyway to be using the fastest part of the drive, just OS and necessary apps, the rest of the files on another HD.

 

[apache_lives]

i actually make a patition just big enough for my swap file and use it for swap file for windows so defrag moves everything and leaves nothing (or barly anything).

o&o - any good? not like norton suck a fat one speed disk

voptxp will do it in under a minute if its done every few days - it might be a cheap copy or the original of o&o defrag?

 

[pscowboy]

woodchuk:
To answer your question; the native defrag (Diskeeper Lite) only closes up spaces; and it doesn't do a great job of that. If you look at the map when it's done, there are still open spaces. It does not do any rearranging.

The best two 3rd party defraggers (both offer strategic file placement) are:

1. Perfect Disk
2. Voptxp

The best "Defrag and Pagefile" scenario would be to put the pagefile on a clean, separate hd (not just a separate partition) with a fixed size (usually 1.5 times ram; or 1.5g -whichever is smaller). For best performance, it should be installed first, before anything else. Configure the pagefile to be emptied out every shutdown.

Then run a good defragger that rearranges for optimum performance.

 

[RichPLS]

I use Diskeeper 10 Premier, and the swap file is on its own disk at 1.5gig yet 2gig of RAM.
DK 10 is the newest, and it leaves gaps, infact appears to even put stuff at the (inside) bottom of drive. Never researched, but I suspect it is least used files, and commonly used ones based on usage patterns are up front. Gaps I understand are necessary for file expansion an general disk movement.
Would be interesting to see a shootout of the disk managers, Norton, Diskeeper10, Perfect Disk and Voptxp to see which ones are most effective.

 

[pscowboy]

I would love to see that too!

One would have to purposely fragment a drive almost to death; then take an image of it in order to replicate the scenario four times for each defragger.

It would require the purchase of the four, and a day's work, (with setup each time, how to document?, and other paperwork - and then creating a report the public could understand); I'd say 10 hours at least. I wish I had the time.

Being completely unbiased by one of us doing it, there would be merit to the result.

 

[woodchuk]

woodchuk:The best "Defrag and Pagefile" scenario would be to put the pagefile on a clean, separate hd (not just a separate partition) with a fixed size (usually 1.5 times ram; or 1.5g -whichever is smaller). For best performance, it should be installed first, before anything else. Configure the pagefile to be emptied out every shutdown.

This sounds like the best solution, not sure what performance gains with smaller files tho. I'm trying VoptXP and it has some interesting options. The inference is the pagefile will be gradually defragged over several boots.
The comparison test sounds great, none of these are that cheap, glad to spring for the money if there is benefit in map loading, etc.

Looks like a dedicated pagefile HD should be fast esp with it's own controller.
Wouldn't it be better to keep an active pagefile (RAM size plus 1 MG) on C and make the new one 1 1/2 times RAM, thereby avoiding a crashdump boot with no swap being on the bootable partition? It should be directed to the newer one first that way, if I understand the sequence.

 

[levicki]

You should try PerfectDisk. Actual version is 7.0.46. Workstation version will suffice since you don't need networked defrag.
It has fast defrag (files only, minimum free space consolidation) and agressive space consolidation mode. It is very fast and can optimize boot files (aka layout.ini) if you tell him to. That however works best in combination with bootvis tool. It also has offline defrag (during boot) so it can completely defragment directories, MFT and swap/hibernation files.
What is of utmost importance is not to defrag with windows defrag if you already did it with some other tool because it will mostly undo it.

Best way IMO to defrag the page file is to disable virtual memory completely, reboot, defrag the partition both offline and online and then enable virtual memory again. Keeping it at fixed size (2x the memory size) prevents it from ever getting fragmented.

If you are so concerned about swap performance perhaps you will be interested in this:
http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/12/05/hyperos_dram_hard_drive_on_the_block/

 

[pscowboy]

You do not want to set two pagefiles. That's very bad practice, and completely unnecessary.

Once you set up the fixed pagefile on "D", you knock off the one on "C", and reboot.

levicki has some excellent comments to enhance this thread. Bootvis and offline defragging are two procedures I've used often. They just plain work.

 

[eyimbo]

You should try PerfectDisk. Actual version is 7.0.46. Workstation version will suffice since you don't need networked defrag.
It has fast defrag (files only, minimum free space consolidation) and agressive space consolidation mode. It is very fast and can optimize boot files (aka layout.ini) if you tell him to. That however works best in combination with bootvis tool. It also has offline defrag (during boot) so it can completely defragment directories, MFT and swap/hibernation files.
What is of utmost importance is not to defrag with windows defrag if you already did it with some other tool because it will mostly undo it.

Best way IMO to defrag the page file is to disable virtual memory completely, reboot, defrag the partition both offline and online and then enable virtual memory again. Keeping it at fixed size (2x the memory size) prevents it from ever getting fragmented.

If you are so concerned about swap performance perhaps you will be interested in this:
http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/12/05/hyperos_dram_hard_drive_on_the_block/

Yeah sure! i'll just sell the house and then sell the car then i'll be able to afford a ram drive with 16G of ram... sure mate. but thanx

 

[levicki]

Yeah sure! i'll just sell the house and then sell the car then i'll be able to afford a ram drive with 16G of ram... sure mate. but thanx

Weird way to thank someone for taking the time to list you all the options.

Have you noticed the conditional construction of my sentence?

If you are so concerned about swap performance...

Anyway, you would need only twice the RAM you have in your computer for that device because you would just keep swap file on it. Say if you have 1GB or RAM you stick 2GB in it and that 2GB doesn't have to be high-speed expensive brand memory. Any cheap DDR400 would do. So you wouldn't actually need to sell anything.

Btw, I was just informing you, I haven't suggested that you should buy it. Other advices I gave are more than enough for regular users but you sounded a bit obsessed so I decided to include HyperDrive III info as well.

 

[RichPLS]

Hey, people who live houses and drive cars where the combined value is what it takes to buy a hyperdrive, have to be given some slack... I will donate the box from my sidebyside fridge so he can have an addition.

 

[levicki]

:mrgreen:

 

[hubbardt]

I use this free utility to defrag the pagefile: PageDefrag