Defragment Question

I realize the importance of keeping your HD defragmented although the logistics of it go right over my head.

i have just run a program that i have on trial ULTIMATE DEFRAG and it has defragged 47% in 1hr 35min what my basic question is are there better defrag programs, i am running XP Pro so have a built in defrag tool does anyone have a preference tool that they use?????

 

Kestrel's recommendation is a great one and the program allows you to Up its CPU priority to make it go faster. I found the program here last week and put it on 4 PC since.

 

Ive not faithfully defragged ever.

Performance loss seen=0.

I defrag every once and a while when i remember, but...*shrug*

 

:clap

All my performance issues stem from fiddling around with various softwares too much.

 

I tried the "don't defrag" idea for the last 3 months on my laptop since I bought it in early Jan '08. It came with Vista, so I defragged it once and turned off it's auto defrag feature. The laptop has become my main work/school machine and sees a lot of file modification activity and program install/uninstalls - a good environment for fragmentation.

I must say that the machine perceptibly seemed to slow down over the time period, especially after SP1 was installed last weekend. Nothing drastic like taking minutes to open a 5 MB word document, but definitely a perceptible delay compared to when it was new and unfragmented.

I just defragged it on Tuesday, and the system seems much 'snappier' now. No, I did not run any scientific tests or time any application, just what I felt after the defrag, so take it FWIW. And I don't think it's a placebo effect either because even file copying speeds have perceptibly improved after the defrag and not just with SP1.*

T5450, 2 GB, 160GB laptop with Vista HP.


* SP1 seems to be utterly useless. Was problematic to install, didn't do anything to improve performance, and broke my video driver (lousy intel X3100) to add insult to injury. I had to reinstall stuff to get back to normal.

 

How experiences differ!

Sp1 was great for me, gave a notable performance increase. I use this laptop daily, and the last time I defragged....months ago. I didnt defrag after SP1 either. Of course, I've never had a problem with Vista prior to Sp1 either.

 

Don't mean to go off-topic, but just a quick remark wrt SP1: now I am seeing weird artifacts on screen occasionally. Started after SP1 and the video driver problem. Looks like the best way to do this is to start with a clean vista install and then update to SP1 before doing anything else and I may have to do that soon. My friend had severe problems getting to install SP1 (the dreaded 'service pack did not install, reverting changes'...after stage 3 of 3 was 100% complete lol) and a clean install way was the only way to get SP1 onto his sytem.

 

Deckard, was SP1 offered to you by way of Windows Update or an Auto Update notice?

If not, and you decided to seek it out and download and install it, that created the problems.

From an article I read today, MS is still having problems with drivers and will not offer SP1 to everyone now. They will work on drivers and when they have the drivers for your computer, then SP1 will be offered to you.

 

Indeed. Big time issues with drivers.

In my case, I installed it over a month ago. I was lucky I didn't have driver problems, because back then, the driver check for WU did not exist, I don't think.

 

Windows update ofcourse. I have Vista's updater configured to warn me of new updates, but to let me choose what I want to install. It offered SP1 as one such update last week.

LOL I would never seek out random MS stuff to install on my PC for no good reason.