Defragmentation Tools and Methods

[AdvancedSetup]

There are many discussions on Defragmentation and when or how to do it. In my opinion the average user probably does not need to do it more than about once a month or less. Unless you're using benchmark software to show the speed difference you often won't see or feel it on an average system. Now that is not the case though for heavy game users, Audio/Video editors, 3D Modeling, etc. as they can and will benefit from a hard drive that is kept defragmented.

Here is a list of both free and commercial utilities to perform the task of defragmenting your hard drive.

Defragmentation - From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For Vista and XP there is a built-in DEFRAG.EXE utility which can be manually run, or create a schedule and run it from a batch file. You can schedule it to run every night while you sleep if needed, or any other schedule you feel suites your needs.

XP usage example, Vista has a couple more options.

• Usage:
  
• DEFRAG <volume> [-a] [-f] [-v] [-?]
  
• volume drive letter or mount point (d: or d:\vol\mountpoint)
  
• -a Analyze only
  
• -f Force defragmentation even if free space is low
  
• -v Verbose output
  
• -? Display this help text
  

Simple batch file example:

@echo off
DEFRAG C:

Basic output example

defrag c: -a

Windows Disk Defragmenter

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