Defragging options

[jimmyca69]

I recently ran a pcpitstop test on my disk health which showed my drive was 13% fragmented. This is ultimately affecting my c: drive performance and cache speed. It mentioned using a defragger other than win 98se one. What i was wondwering was what other defraggers are out there for free to download and do you recommend any?

any help would be great.

[YODA74]

You could use W/ME's defrag I think you can still get it here
http://www.comp-solve.com/defrag.htm

This will speed up defrag but might not accomplish what you have going on, are you defraging with apps running in the background??And are you doing a scandisk first? and fixing any errors to the drive?

I do not whole heartedly put a lot of faith in PC pitstop..you may want to try SI Sandra and again I do not whole heartedly put my faith in any free on line tests.

[dilsburger]

I do not whole heartedly put a lot of faith in PC pitstop..
Ditto here: I use PC Pitstop when I make major system or hardware changes but I take the results with a "grain of salt". Particularly where the HD is concerned - I've been "flagged" for slow HD performance only to run again and come through the tests clean....

[Mark Miller]

Most things that I have read say that for free ms defrag is good. If yoyou want to spend money than there are a few programs that you can find in your computer store. Norton's speed disk on Norton Utilities worked fine for me before XP.
Mark

[malcore]

I do not whole heartedly put a lot of faith in PC pitstop

Agree completely. One of PCPitstop's biggest advertisers is the company that makes Diskeeper and Diskeeper Lite, which they recommend using after being flagged for even a 5% fragmented drive.

Another thing not noted is that their tests do not account for what OS you are using. Win9X will invariably be flagged for poor disk caching because it doesn't handle this anywhere near as well as XP. A few "grains of salt" are needed when interpretting results from this test.;)

[sleddog]

Diskeeper -- http://www.execsoft.com/ -- is an excellent disk defragmenter. Actually, it is the software behind the Windows 2000 and XP defragmenters. Windows NT4 shipped without a disk defragmenter; MS tried to convince everyone that the NTFS filesystem didn't need one :)

There is a free Diskeeper Lite version available for download on the above website. I used it for years with NT4.

[jimmyca69]

thanx guys for all your thoughts and ideas.

cheers - will have a look at diskeeper and also ME defragger

[kayofcircles]

Sorry..bit belated here..but I endorse ME's defrag. I have 98, and have never had any problems with ME's defrag..and it's much faster. As was mentioned above, I run a thorough ScanDisk first, then Defrag. And also mentioned above, make sure everything not necessary is turned off. I took the test at PCPitStop long ago..and flunked. Said mine was not performing up to speed either, but it works okay for me..:)

[Budfred]

When I am thinking clearly enough to remember, I go into Safe Mode to run Defrag. You will get it done faster and better from there.

Budfred

[Mark Miller]

Anither good reason to go to Xp. I have a 120 gig hardrive and no matter if I use xp defrag or nortons speed disk it never takes more than 40 minutes. Xp kind of defrags itself everyday putting your most run opps up front, Anyway MS defrag works well.
Mark