Tuesday, May 12, 2009

The 2009 Defrag Shootout: which program to test first?

Now that everything is ready to start testing, which program should I test first? I want to alternate between commercial products and free/open source products, so my alphabetical commercial list looks like this:
  • Advanced Defrag
  • Defrag Express
  • Diskeeper
  • MST Defrag
  • O&O Defrag
  • Paragon Total Defrag
  • PerfectDisk
  • PuranDefrag
  • TuneUp Utilities 2009
  • UltimateDefrag
  • Vopt
The alphabetical free list looks like this:
  • Auslogics Disk Defrag
  • Defraggler
  • DiskTune
  • IOBit SmartDefrag
  • JkDefrag
  • Microsoft Windows Disk Defragmenter
  • MyDefrag
  • Quicksys DiskDefrag
  • UltraDefrag
Are there any others that need to be added, and will anyone complain if I deviate from an alphabetical order? Please leave comments.

29 comments:

  1. ALL :P


    but serious now i think you should start with perfect disk and for the free with ultra defrag.

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  2. The list looks fine to me Donn :)

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  3. I would like to see Puran Defrag vs PerfectDisk. I'm really impressed with Puran Defrag.

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  4. Finally the test start.

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  5. Are you planning to test the Windows' own Disk Defragmenter? I don't see it on the list. Otherwise, the list looks good. For more randomization, how about just drawing a paper with the name of the product out of a hat? Actually two hats: one for commercial, another for freeware.

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  6. Please include IOBit SmartDefrag v1.11.

    Also, could you include "redefrag" performance, that is, defrag the disk, use it a little, redefrag it. Some defragmenters will start as if the first defrag never occurred. Others, on the contrary, will minimize the redefragmentation.

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  7. These are all great suggestions. I'll keep them in mind, and add other ideas as we go.

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  8. I'm anxious to see the new testing - I recently tested trial versions of both PerfectDisk and Puran Defrag. PD2009 crashed to bluescreen every time (apparent conlfict with my FolderLock application) and after running Puran Defrag, the MFT of my boot drive was hosed and I'm having to reinstall Windows! For now I'm sticking with Windows disk defragmenter, Auslogics Disk Defrag and Defraggler - I know they won't come in first in the shootout, but they never crashed my system.

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  9. Maybe you should take a look at Disk Defragmenter from Norton Utilities 14.0?

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  10. Finally... 2009 starts.
    Have been eagerly waiting for this.
    Thanks for taking the time.

    Hoping for some interesting results.

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  11. @Donn

    Are you testing these programs on XP or on Vista system? If it is Vista, I would like to see the test of Vista's own defragger first, then PerfectDisk, and all other defragmenters after that.

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  12. WinXP, Vista 32-bit, Vista 64-bit.

    I will be including results for each version of WDD as well as the program being tested.

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  13. The list looks good Donn! And it also looks like everyone is pretty excited about the "shootout". Your work is awesome and I think can speak for all of your readers when I say that we appreciate your efforts tremendously!caperpa

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  14. Recalibration of WinXP has begun. The pace is slow because I have a ton of urgent programming to do.

    Thanks for all the suggestions and comments, and keep them coming.

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  15. i've made a mistake, recent Norton edition runs Windows Defragmenter. have fun testing, great blog.

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  16. I'm especially interested in Diskeeper vs O&O on vista 64 and win7 :)

    good luck with the testing
    you should make a donate button somewhere on your blog for your effort :)

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  17. Thanks Donn....

    I always read your defrag items with interest, and even use your results to help make my own decisions.

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  18. I believe the vista-integrated defragmenter is hopeless, as it took him about 24 hours to defragment 250 GB on my disk.
    I think PerfectDisk vs Puran Defrag (PD vs PD :) ) is the hottest battle of the year, so good luck in your testing!

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  19. I would really appreciate a test of Tuneup Utilities 2009 drive defrag. I have used this program before and it seems to do a great job optimizing and consolidating free space. Thanks.

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  20. PerfectDisk just crashed my system + it consumes waaaay too much resources, compared to O&O.
    Puran Defrag is quite nice- fast, not too resource consuming...
    AND
    The only defragmentator that managed to defrag my smartphone (Nokia N95 8GB, i.e. with a hard disk) was Puran Defrag! Neither PerfectDisk nor O&O managed to see the phone disk when I connected it to my PC.

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  21. ehh that comment of mine about phone defragmentation is nonsense. I just didn't know the is an option "defrag removable storage"

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  22. jkDefrag has been replaced by MyDefrag 4.0 Build 9 Beta

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  23. I plan on testing JkDefrag and MyDefrag, that's why both are on the list.

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  24. Oh, and if you have enough time, can you please compare the best of the free defrags with the best of the defrags for which you have to pay? I think that will be quite useful as we'll know whether it is actually worth paying ANY money for a defrag.

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  25. Donn,

    Please review MST Defrag 3.0 (3.6 is in beta). Though version 2.0 wasn't good, versions 1.9 and 3.0 are - especially 3.0. Out of the four on-the-fly auto defraggers I experimented with on 4 different machines (late last year), MST 3.0 was consistently the best while consuming the least amount of resources.

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  26. Donn Edwards:
    Are there any others that need to be added

    Freeware:

    UltimateDefrag V1.72
    http://www.disktrix.com/UDFree.htm

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  27. Puran, Defraggler, SmartDefrag - hmm, not alphabetical. How about in order of your first impression of their goodness?

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  28. I would the test cleverest and BEST one first, and compare the rest to that :

    Puran Defrag.

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The last 50 anonymous "comments" have been spam, and were deleted before being published. I have disabled anonymous commenting for a while, until the spammers go away. I appreciate all genuine comments, and publish all comments that are on topic and not spam.