What's the best defragment program?

[lostinisaan]

  Sabai Dee?

 

            Two external hard drives show  horrible high  fragmented files. Now I ran AEOMI Defragger and it took thrree times but still shows a lot of red ones. Now I found O & O Defrap Pro and installed it, but would like to know it it's worth to wait foir the result. I';m not in the mood to waste my time.

 

          The PC's are fast as race horses, but why can't these programs do a great job on external drives? Any replies would be deeply appreciated.

 

             Thanks a lot in advance. 

[Scotwight]

If you defrag a SSD drive doesn't it kill it?

[muzmurray]

If you do have SSD drives, it would seem that you could just be shortening their life by defragging, and not actually achieving very much.

 

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2047513/fragging-wonderful-the-truth-about-defragging-your-ssd.html

[Oxx]

In the future, why not format the drives as EXT3 (as they do on Linux systems)? That way you'll never need to defragment.

 

The reason defragmenting is slow is because it requires physical I/O, which is much, much slower than in memory operations.  Plus, defragmenting can require individual blocks of data to be moved several times.

 

Anyway, no need to worry about a few red blocks.  They're not going to have any perceivable impact.

[lostinisaan]

A fragmentation of 26.68 %  seems a ;little bit high don't you think?  

[muzmurray]

For an SSD drive that amount does not matter at all, but you have not confirmed what type of drives you have?

[BudRight]

Do not defrag an SSD. There is no reason to. The reason you defragged mechanical hard drives was so that the mechanical arm could read data sequentially like a record. SSDs do not have this and do not care where the data is stored in the device. Defragging does not make it faster.

 

If they are not your boot drives then it doesn't matter even if they are fragmented mechanical drives.

[Hans12345]

Windows 7 and above have there own diskfragmentation program. That program runs automatically when your computer is idle. Most experts agree that defragmentation does not have any advantage it only wears your harddrive down.

[lj cm]

I assume you (also) have a Backup of your external disk's!?

Just make a fresh Backup of them and then Restore. 

[Oxx]

27 minutes ago, lj cm said:

I assume you (also) have a Backup of your external disk's!?

Just make a fresh Backup of them and then Restore. 

 

You'd have to wipe the disks after the backup before restoring for this to work.

[Smudge]

The way technology is these days the requirement for defragging is minimal.  Windows has it's own defrag tool which works just fine if required.  Certainly do not pay for 3rd party programs that do the same thing.

 

I have not used the programs you have mentioned but I suspect if they are not working and there are red blocks everywhere then maybe portions of the disk are damaged.

 

My recommendation would be:

 

• Backup your data now
• Check your drives for errors and fix/replace as required

Assuming you are using windows, right click any drive in explorer, click properties and then tools.  Here you will find the defrag and disk checking/fixing options.

 

As mentioned above, defragging an SSD is pointless, there are no moving parts and as such seek & write times are the same no matter where the data is on the SSD.

 

 

[Scotwight]

8 minutes ago, Smudge said:

The way technology is these days the requirement for defragging is minimal.  Windows has it's own defrag tool which works just fine if required.  Certainly do not pay for 3rd party programs that do the same thing.

 

I have not used the programs you have mentioned but I suspect if they are not working and there are red blocks everywhere then maybe portions of the disk are damaged.

 

My recommendation would be:

 

• Backup your data now
• Check your drives for errors and fix/replace as required

Assuming you are using windows, right click any drive in explorer, click properties and then tools.  Here you will find the defrag and disk checking/fixing options.

 

As mentioned above, defragging an SSD is pointless, there are no moving parts and as such seek & write times are the same no matter where the data is on the SSD.

The OP has not been back to clarify if an SSD or not.  I suspect the OP will realize at some point that the speed is determined by the connection USB2 or 3 or another method and that it is different from an internal drive.  

[reallybigken]

12 hours ago, Scotwight said:

If you defrag a SSD drive doesn't it kill it?

Defrag'ing a SSD has little effect. In fact fragmentation may actual help SSD's . I actual work with companies that build and manufacture SDD drives and the memory controllers. I have a fairly detailed understanding of how there work.

 

The actual memory used in a SSD drive are very slow (relative to the computers internal memory), so to effectively speed up the drive they read from literal 1000's of memories at the same time, in parallel, within the SDD. This makes the apparent speed of the device look fast, which it is in the grander scheme of things. Just like multiple processor in your computer can make it seem faster.

 

They also do something called load leveling. This is to improve the life span of the drive. They spread the data (from the files) across multiple memory devices and location. This is so a single memories doesn't get warn out from to much use. In other word they try to make sure the the amount of read and write load is level (spread out) for all the memory location. This also means the files ,and their data, are fragmented internal by the drive itself.

 

This is a vary simplified explanation of some of the inner workings of an SSD drive. There is actually a lot more involved.

 

So in conclusion: Understand that the data and files are fragmented by SSD itself. So defraging has little effect.

 

The main thing I have found that slows down a Windows PC is something called The registry. It stores all the System , Program, and device setting. As time goes on it gets bigger and bigger. Every time you start a program it has to read the registry, and because the registry gets bigger it takes programs longer to start and do their jobs. There are programs out there that can clean up the Register and other files which may help speed up you computer. I would start there.

 

Just my thoughts and I hope it helps.

[Generalchaos]

MyDefrag is quite good and is quite fast, http://filehippo.com/download_mydefrag/

 

The other is from Piriform - Defraggler, it is a lot slower than MyDefrag, https://www.piriform.com/defraggler/download

 

Both work fine and are free.

[Scotwight]

I’m firmly convinced that the tiny difference that even the best SSD defragger makes is not worth reducing the life span of your SSD. Add another voice to the chorus that’s singing “Don’t defrag your SSD.” If you’re truly convinced there are performance problems with your SSD due to file or cell fragmentation, get a utility that will issue a TRIM command. Or copy your data off, do a secure erase (usinghdparm or Parted Magic), and copy it back again.

 

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2047513/fragging-wonderful-the-truth-about-defragging-your-ssd.html?page=2

[Keesters]

PerfectDisk works fine for me. It has a special SSD mode.

 

 

[Scotwight]

2 minutes ago, Keesters said:

PerfectDisk works fine for me. It has a special SSD mode.

What kind of connection do your SSD external hard drives have?

[manarak]

4 hours ago, lostinisaan said:

A fragmentation of 26.68 %  seems a ;little bit high don't you think?  

 

Fragmentation of data is completely irrelevant on a SSD. The reason for that is that the access times are the same for every data cell regardless of its location on the drive.

The one problem that could slow down SSD performance was the need to erase previously used cells before writing new data, but modern OS such as win 8 or win 10 are capable of managing the status of the cells (TRIM commands) and able to then directly write into the cells without wait times.

 

The consequence of this is that there is no advantage of defragmenting SSDs.

 

So... defrag SSD? no. It brings no advantage but it does bear potential risks.

[bendejo]

auslogics.com

Been using their free defragger for ages.

 

 

[lj cm]

3 hours ago, Oxx said:

 

You'd have to wipe the disks after the backup before restoring for this to work.

 

I didn't know that. I always Format before Restore, but was not really aware, it made any difference. 

 

PS! A lot of interesting replies about SSD's; but if you use those in external disk's, you have to much money!?   

[kekalot]

5 hours ago, Hans12345 said:

Windows 7 and above have there own diskfragmentation program. That program runs automatically when your computer is idle. Most experts agree that defragmentation does not have any advantage it only wears your harddrive down.

 

^^ and this is the right answer.

 

I use all my drives heavily, Steam updates about 5-10 games every single day on two computers.

 

Windows shows 0% fragmentation to those 5 drives and is of course disabled with the 2x SSD Windows drives.

[how241]

Lots of good info here. Thanks

[Scotwight]

21 minutes ago, kekalot said:

 

^^ and this is the right answer.

 

I use all my drives heavily, Steam updates about 5-10 games every single day on two computers.

 

Windows shows 0% fragmentation to those 5 drives and is of course disabled with the 2x SSD Windows drives.

Yup.  I replaced my Windows 10 drive with a new SSD and Win 10 boots in 9 seconds.  

[Keesters]

4 hours ago, Scotwight said:

What kind of connection do your SSD external hard drives have?

 

USB

 

[lostinisaan]

10 hours ago, muzmurray said:

For an SSD drive that amount does not matter at all, but you have not confirmed what type of drives you have?

 

 SATA blue 1 TB. No idea who started the SSD thingy?

[lostinisaan]

2 hours ago, Scotwight said:

Yup.  I replaced my Windows 10 drive with a new SSD and Win 10 boots in 9 seconds.  

 

       I didn't replace my SATA drive and the boot time is 30 seconds. Machine is faster than a race horse. 

 

         The SSD's are getting cheaper and cheaper and I might have another two to three years on my drive, still warranty on it.

 

      Then I'll buy a SSD for a lot less. And I'm not a cheap Charley. You just don't need an SSD if you're not doing gaming, or special graphic stuff.

 

      And for the one poster who's so fanatic with his games, there 're also other things in this world that make fun.

 

       I really hate it when people are addicted to games. And that's what it is. They stop speaking to people and live in a Hula Hop world/. 

 

   Smart Defrag Pro's running now and I've got two external drives attached and will try what job it does. Drive C and D are okay leo.

 

        

 

            

[jesimps]

5 hours ago, bendejo said:

auslogics.com

Been using their free defragger for ages.

 

 

Me too. No complaints.

 

 

[DiDiChok]

I use SmartDefrag from IOBIT which is free and seems very good to me.  Obtainable here:  http://www.iobit.com/en/iobitsmartdefrag.php?a

 

It has many options and also replaces the built-in defragmenter on most windows system - you don't need two running!

 

What I have noticed is that sometimes there are certain parts of the disk that contain immovable data that can never be defragmented.  One computer I looked at had a lot (and I mean a lot) of downloadable games and defragmenters reported that 25% of the disk was fragmented.  However, it just wasn't possible to defragment these parts of the disk because of the immovable data.

[Scotwight]

2 hours ago, lostinisaan said:

 

 SATA blue 1 TB. No idea who started the SSD thingy?

Probably my fault.  I was afraid you might hurt your extension drive thinking it might be an SSD since you didn't mention.  Although reading this thread the instructions on my SSD drive must be wrong and it's OK although fruitless to defrag the drive.  I only use my non SSD drives for storage so I don't run into many speed problems.  The difference in speed using an SSD drive as your main HD is quite noticeable at least it was for me.  

[Simons3]

 

Lostinisaan, I may have missed it but presuming you are defragging due to slow performance on your  external drives. @ 20%-30% any performance hit should be undetectable to end user experience and your drives being western Digital  7200 RPM Sata 6GB/s drives should be up to the requirement.

A couple of things you might check, first off  if you are on a windows platform make sure the drives are formatted NTFS not FAT32 , Secondly check how you are connecting your drive, best is using the E-SATA port, but failing that USB III would be optimum  and its easy to plug into a USB II as they all look the same. Also check your firmware drivers are all up to date on your system ( including  BIOS).

 

Cheers  Simon