Best Free Disk De-fragmenter

I didn't see "-b" listed for JKdefrag. What does it perform? Check the "Commandline" section on: http://www.kessels.com/JkDefrag/index.html . You could also ask this question on the JK forum and most probably the Jeroen Kessels will reply himself.

JKdefrag Forum:
http://www.kessels.com/forum/index.php

What defrag method did you use? Sometimes the defrag with intentionally fragment files to fill spaces and increase speed. For example, JKdefrag does this on most of its slower sorts.

JKdefrag now has a 3.36 fix out. It merely fixes a long file name problem and a problem with the screen saver on XP machines.

I suggest the excellent "index" file that comes with JKdefrag (in the "doc" directory); it opens in a browser and has excellent details about defragging in general.

JKdefrag is set up to optimize in a way that balances file optimization and improving the longevity of your drive, instead of constantly doing a sort of the whole drive and putting it through even more wear and tear, as Ultimate Defrag would do if used in one of the slower sorting settings all the time.

You could set up a multiple-shortcuts for JKdefrag and include simple commandline arguments by right clicking on the shortcut, clicking properties, and in the "Target" textbox enter something like "-a 1" (without quotes) right after the file. For example: "C:\Program Files\JkDefrag-3.34\JkDefrag.exe" c: -a 1. By the way, this command will tell the program to analyze the C-drive and do nothing else.

For a more complete defrag, you could use the command "-a 8" (without quotes). ("C:\Program Files\JkDefrag-3.34\JkDefrag.exe" -a 8). This will sort all the directories/files by their size. "-a 7" sorts them by their name, "-a 9" by their last access, and so on. The default setting is "-a 3", which you do not need to add to the target box since it is run automatically if no other command is given: it does the analyze, fixup, and fast optimization commands. The slower defrags ("-a [7, 8, 9, 10,or 11]") are not for daily use and they would cause a lot of wear and tear if used daily. (I'm starting to wonder about IObit's SmartDefrag since it seems to do one of these slower defrags whenever you choose Defrag && Optimize.)

I have three shortcuts on my system: (1) one for the analyze and do nothing command; (2) the regular shortcut with no commands; (3) the slower defrag that I rarely ever use. You could also create an scheduled JKdefrag by creating a simple task in the Task Scheduler that comes with Windows (I suggest no commands so that it will do the fast optimization). This would be an alternative to using the screensaver.

A good way to get more of the files defragged (and for any defragger this is true) is to restart and push the F8 button before Windows loads to enter safe mode so that fewer of the files are loaded, run Ccleaner or a similar program, and then run JKdefrag. If you have XP, you could create a BartonPE disk and run the program from that.

Great question! I had the same question when I started using it. Hope this helps.

Hi

I think JkDefrag with default settings is already excellent. If you want to customize your defrag, Ultimate Defrag is a great choice.

(Same poster). The Microsoft TechNet (formerly Sysinternals) pagedefrag, I think is now incompatible with Vista, but JKdefrag has a cool solution in its "doc" file: "But even better [than the pagedefrag program] is to set the pagefile to a fixed size, so it will never get fragmented again. It's very easy to do" (JKdefrag). I won't include the directions since they are 7 steps, but basically after turning off pagefile and running a JKdefrag (you should first write down the "Currently Allocated" number before temporarily turning off the pagefile), you set the custom size (for "both the Initial Size and the Maximum Size" as your "Currently Allocated" number) of the pagefile to whatever was previously the allotted size. There will be some rebooting involved, but it worked for me and removes any need for defragging the pagefile.

Hi, thanks Shane. It is my favorite and it works great with Vista. I hope future versions will work under limited user accounts and not require UAC or full user account status, but even the IObit SmartDefrag program has problems loading at first in a limited user account, so there may not be a good solution other than just doing away with my limited user account (which I've already done).

I think Ultimate Defrag has some major bugs and I will never use it again after it moved all my files to the center of my drive, for no good reason since I hadn't even touched any of the settings and just ran an auto defrag.

JKDefrag is much more stable, except the GUI is out-of-date -- the pagefile program does not work in Vista, the registry optimizer still works but was never redesigned for Vista, and the cleaner is pretty basic (so says its author in the help menu, which suggests using CCleaner instead). Otherwise a simple JKDefrag is very good in my experience.

IOBit SmartDefrag is still in Beta, so be careful with it. In my experience, it is OK but not as thorough or flexible as JKdefrag. It doesn't work very good if you use a limited account and probably won't even load on startup, but this is the case for other programs as well such as sandboxie.

I tried Ultimate Drfrag. It analysed 17% fragmented (IOBit and Defraggker reported 1%).
Ran Ultimate on Auto setting and fragmentation went up to 17%. 2nd run 33% and 4th 44%.
Something wrong I fear!