Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

Question

Is separate defrag program needed for Windows 7?

Oct 18, 2011 2:00AM PDT

Hi folks,
I've been buying computers from a company that custom builds them for trading the stock market. Optimal performance is required. With the XP operating system, this company included a good defrag program called Perfect Disk. However, with computers shipped with Windows 7, they're no longer including Perfect Disk, saying that it's no longer necessary because the new defrag program on Windows 7 is good enough. Personally, I think they're just trying to save money by not having to buy a license for Perfect Disk for every computer they ship. I just did a defrag on my new Windows 7 computer using Microsoft's in house defrag, and it took about five minutes to run. This computer should have been quite fragmented, so my suspicion is that (once again), Microsoft's defrag program isn't very good. Even for minor fragmentation, Perfect Disk, or even my older preference, Norton's speed disk, would take considerably longer (suggesting to me that these programs were more thorough).
Anyway, please somebody give me the lowdown on Microsoft's native defrag program on Windows 7--is it nearly as good as the independent programs like Perfect Disk or Speed Disk which are designed for this job?
Thanks, Tasuki

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Answer
Why use traditional drives?
Oct 18, 2011 3:47AM PDT

You seem to be ready for Hyrbid and Solid State drives.
Bob

- Collapse -
??
Oct 18, 2011 6:18AM PDT

Bob,
Hybrid is a new term to me, but I did look into solid state before ordering this new computer, and for reasons I've forgotten now, decided against solid state.
Anyway, I've got this hard drive now, and I need to know if I should go out and purchase Perfect Disk on my own, or if Microsoft's Defrag is sufficiently good. Understand that previous attempts by Microsoft to provide a defrag utility were a dismal failure compared to the programs sold by independent companies. Anyway, if anyone has any info on the subject, I'd be very grateful.
Thanks,
Tasuki

- Collapse -
Hybrid.
Oct 18, 2011 8:19PM PDT

I am unaware of that specific term as well, but I suspect what it means is, an SSD for the OS, and a normal spinning drive for everything else. I believe new laptops are doing this often now.

I am still unsure about SSDs. Great for speed, and no defragmenting required, but because of inherent difficulties in the architecture of the drives a 'wipe clean' and 'reinstall' may be required on a regular basis. Not everyone is prepared for that.

But back to defragmenting hdd's. I never have done it, either in my new Windows 7 nor in my older but still used XP system. I never had the need.

I would simply hate to defragment my existing 1TB hard drive. It would take days! Add to that the consideration that a ChkDsk is often considered best before a defrag, and I am looking at a week or so before the whole process is complete.

I might be exaggerating, I don't know because I haven't done it since the old Windows 98 20 GB drives, but I am of the opinion that defragmenting is not a process we simply have to do, nowadays.

Mark

- Collapse -
Re: hybrid
Oct 18, 2011 8:46PM PDT
- Collapse -
Ahh, thanks Kees.
Oct 18, 2011 8:51PM PDT

Not one I had heard of, but now I know.

Mark

- Collapse -
Re: defrag
Oct 18, 2011 8:51PM PDT

After that 5 minutes, what did the analysis show about the results? How many files, and which files were still defragged? If none, it might be a very good program Microsoft wrote.

And how about using Piriforms Defragler (free) or sysinternals contig (free also) as a tool to see how bad the defrag from Microsoft is?

And the fundamental question: why do you think that the optimal performance for what those computers do is dependent on a defrag?
- Don't they have enough RAM to keep all data they need for normal use? Then better add some RAM.
- Do those transactions use files that your analysis fiinds defragged? If not, they are already optimized in this respect.

Kees

- Collapse -
answers to kees_B
Oct 20, 2011 9:07AM PDT

Kee_B, to answer your questions as best I can,
1) the microsoft defragger on Windows 7 is extremely unhelpful with any details
2) I am loathe to try free defraggers because I've gotten unsatisfactory resuts from them in the past. Each company comes up with its own algorithms for deciding what chunk of what file goes where, and I've found from experience that Perfect Disk seems to do the best job, with Norton's old Speed Disk coming in second.
3) I've got 12 GB of RAM so that's not the issue.
4) I've found from experience that, at least with XP, that regular defragging is absolutely essential to keeping your hard drive in tip top shape, running smoothly. It's actually very easy to visualize this---if you ask to pull up a file, and the entire file is neatly located in one section of the hard drive, then the Hard drive's head has very little work to do to retrieve it. However, if pieces of the file are located all over the hard drive surface, then the mechanical part of the hard drive has to do alot more work searching for each piece and re-assembling the file so you can see it. Try repeating this thousands of times per day, and you can readily understand how a hard drive would mechanically fail under this kind of stress. So, that's the reason for defragging regularly.
Tasuki

- Collapse -
So you didn't try defragler and contig?
Oct 23, 2011 6:06AM PDT

Very nice tools (contig comes from Microsoft, by the way). They show what files are defragged and they let you choose which (folder and wildcard) to defrag. So you can defrag only the files that are essential to the performance of your application and leave alone the others (many are in the System Restore Area and never used, many are files that are only added to such as logfiles).

If a file is used 1000's of times a day, I'm rather sure it's cached somewhere inside that 12 GB of RAM, so defragging it (if it IS defragged) makes not much sense.

But it seems you aren't interested in optimizing your application and just follow some general guidelines that might not be relevant.

Kees

- Collapse -
PS.
Oct 19, 2011 1:54AM PDT

The current 500GB Hybrid drives run about 99 bucks. I liked it so well I replaced a good drive with one.
Bob