[Think about Defragmentation!!!]

There is a free version and a paid version of Ultimate Defrag. The paid version will allow you to allocate files for "High Performance" and also to allocate files for "Archiving". The high performance files are placed at the outer track of your HDD (fastest) and the archived files are placed on the inner tracks. I have tested Ultimate Defrag (both free and paid) for a few months now and have come to a conclusion. If you have extreme amounts of Data such as on a server, then perhaps Ultimate Defrag would be good, but for a normal Home PC, Ultimate Defrag is way overkill. Even Disktrix, the developer of UD states that most users would benefit the most using the "Auto" feature of the program. I can tell you that it is possible to spend days and days trying to configure UD to determine what files should be "high performance" and what should be archived. For instance, you can allocate all "DLL" files for high performance and all "ZIP" files to be archived. The bottom line on all this is that we are talking "Mille-seconds" speed improvements for a Home PC. It has been my experience that a good defragment AND optimize program is all a Home PC needs. Let me put it this way: with Ultimate Defrag, I have scheduled every day to simply defragment. Every other day to defragment by "Consolidation", and once a week to defrag by "File and Folder Name". I see NO speed difference after doing all this with UD than I do with simply running Smart Defrag's "Defrag and Optimize"---and trust me on this---Smart Degrag is MUCH easier to use. So, I now use only Smart Defrag and occasionally I use the free version which I found of Paragon Partition Manager. Paragon has a boot-time defrag and also an MFT defrag option, which very, very few programs offer. In the event my Page file gets split up, I use the free Pagedfrg developed by Mark Rusinovich of Sysinternals (which is now part of Microsoft). It works perfectly. Anyway, if you are like me, go ahead and try Ultimate Defrag but you must use the paid version to get the benefits you are asking for. Disktrix will NOT answer any tech questions for their free version. Eventually I think you will find that a good and easy to use program like Smart Defrag works just as well. For years I used Diskeeper and Vopt, then I used O&O and PerfectDisk. I've used the "Defragler" program and the free Auslogics program and I've used a myriad of others. As I stated in another Post, my favorite feature of Smart Defrag is a personal one. If I want, I can start the defrag and optimize running-----and go to bed! Smart Defrag will shut down my system when it is finished. This is what I have started doing. After a long day of PC use, every night I set the Smart Defrag program to do its thing and then shut down my System. When I awake the next morning--I am good to go for another day. Sometimes SIMPLE is BEST!

[Think about Defragmentation!!!]

Use "Normal Sense" (Common sense isn't common anymore)

 

Similar to Spyware programs, there are a ton of Defragmenting programs. The question is always the same--which ones work the best? Paid or free? In some cases the answer can only be found through extensive testing, while in other cases the answers are staring us right in the face. Consider you have a huge punch bowl filled with 500,000 M&M's. Their are 100,000 RED M&M's. Each RED M&M is numbered 1 thru 100,000 and of course they are all mixed up (Fragmented) in the bowl. Your task? Find all 100,000 RED M&M's and lay them out on the table (your disk) in order from #1 to #100,000. A standard run of the mill Defragmenting program will indeed sort out the RED M&M's, but not in order. This is good because all the RED M&M's are now on one section of your disk and the track head has much less seeking to do to find them---but your track head STILL has to sort through all 100,000 RED M&M's to find the numbers it is looking for because they are not in order. Keep in mind that there are still 400,000 M&M's of different colors that have to be dealt with! In enters "Optimization". The better programs do it in different ways, but the attempt is the same---to sort out all the RED M&M's and to ALSO put them in order by number. The program that claims to do this best is Ultimate Defrag (both free and paid), however I had many questions with UD and the Company refuses to answer them unless I pay for the full version. Then there is O&O Defrag, and PerfectDisk, and Diskeeper and many, many others. To date, in my experience, the most efficient Defragging programs are the FREE ones, being the free version of ULtimateDefrag, JKDefrag and------Iobit's SmartDefrag. I will tell you may favorite feature in a moment, but I can tell you that if you just want to keep your HOME system clean and as fast as possible, there is no need for an "always on" program--one that constantly is defragging in the background. That's too much bloat and too many resources slowing you down. You want a "small footprint" efficiently coded program that both defrags AND optimizes--when you ask it to---or when you SCHEDULE it to defrag. SmartDefrag does this very well. UD does it also, but the nicest feature of both programs is that they use the Windows Task Scheduler which is built into Windows anyway. My favorite feature----I can program SmartDefrag to do its thing and go to bed. It will Defrag and Optimize and then shut down my System--no need for me to wait around until it's done. For "Boot Optimization", try defragmenting in "SAFE" mode. Some defragmenting programs will do this and it is basically the same thing as "Boot Optimization". By the way, if your Page file gets messed up (fragmented), there are two good ways to handle that. One is to uninstall your page file--reboot--and then reinstall, and the other, which is my favorite, is a small program created and coded by Mark Russinovich called aptly "Pagedfrg" and is now a part of "Sysinternals"-------which was bought out by a company you may have heard of--Microsoft! Pagedfrg is a free program that does exactly what it says it will do! Strange, in this day and age, to find a program that is coded extremely well and does exactly what it is supposed to do. So, I would not spend any money on a Defragmenting program--or an antiVirus program--or a Firewall. I've been doing this soooo long (too long) that my main concerns now are with System stability and a Company's "willingness to help" should the need arise. The Company "Disktrix" who makes UltimateDefrag fails miserably in the area of Tech support unless you buy their program--and they tell you that up front. Iobit is a totally different Ball Game with their willingness to help and answer questions. With a normal Home Computer, I would use only SmartDefrag, program SmartDefrag on a schedule, and get on with life without worrying about Defragmentation! Don't eat the M&M's.