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A disk defragmenter is a key toolkit element for keeping your PC running optimally. Disk fragmentation occurs through normal everyday use of your PC; over time your system becomes unable to store related data on your disk in a sequential (contiguous) manner, and must "fragment" files across different physical locations on your hard drive. This increases the number of times your hard drive must spin (or "seek"), which slows down the process of reading and writing files. Defragmentation software compresses files and free space back into contiguous blocks.

Defragmenting your hard drive on a regular basis is a sound housekeeping habit; a chore that most home users should do once a month.

Our top recommendation for Vista users is Smart Defrag from IObit.Com - it combines many of the best features of its competition in a single product. Originally a simple utility to defragment your drive in the background during system idle time, the team at IOBit.Com has been busy developing a fully-fledged disk optimization utility. More than just a defragmentation tool, Smart Defrag also allows users to choose to optimize the placement of files on their hard drive during the operation. It still offers the "always-on" Auto Defrag, which can be further customized to kick-in after a set period of idle time and cut-out at a certain point of resource usage. Other options include a simple scheduling tool, a battery power setting for laptop users, the ability to skip files based on size and a range of startup options. While still in its infancy (it's only version 1.10), the product belies its age with its range of options and performance. IObit.Com has been extremely responsive to early concerns about initial defragmentation times on large drives, with the latest version offering "Fast Optimize" and "Deep Optimize" options.

Close behind is Defraggler – a solid combination of performance, stability and usability from Piriform. We have been watching Defraggler since its Beta release and now that some of the early bugs have been ironed out with its most recent version, it’s a good, safe bet. With a very clean interface design based on the common Windows defrag interface, Defraggler is incredibly easy to use and offers all the options you need to keep your machine running smoothly – including the ability to defragment individual files and folders as well as an in-built defragmentation scheduler. As an added bonus, eXcessive Software – the guys behind the popular Power Defragmenter interface – have released a shell extension called Enhanced Defraggler Shell which allows Defraggler to be run directly from the Windows Explorer context menu.

For users with older versions of Windows we still like Diskeeper Lite, an older free version of Executive Software's current commercial Diskeeper product. It's simple to use, has a good graphical interface and performs very well – despite being at version 7 while its commercial sibling is at version 11. It is possible to update to version 9 of Diskeeper Lite by downloading Intel's large (89MB) Desktop Utilities package available from the Intel site. If you unzip the file you'll find Diskeeper V9 Lite in the folder ../3rdparty/Diskeeper/. Neither the read-me file nor the License Agreement prohibit downloading and using this program on a single computer, so it appears to be a perfectly legitimate way to obtain the program. You can remove Diskeeper's annoying nag screen by following the instructions here. Unfortunately, Diskeeper does not work with Vista.

Another popular player in the commercial defragmentation space is DiskTrix which produces Ultimate Defrag. Fortunately, they also offer a freeware version - UltimateDefrag Freeware Edition. While the free version lacks many of the features of its commercial sibling, it still offers top defragmentation performance as well as the ability to allow users to place files and folders on sections of the disk for better performance.

If you want a simple, effective but resource-frugal option, try the open source JKDefrag. One of its nicest features is the ability to set it up as a screensaver; that way your disks will always be defragged without getting in the way of your work. Unlike Diskeeper, it's compatible with Vista and also has a 64-bit version.

For more options you may want to consider these:

Another company investing heavily in product development of late is Auslogics with its Auslogics Disk Defrag offering. The last few releases have seen the team add the ability to defragment single files and folders, schedule operations and update the program's algorithm for improved performance. We're excited by the prospect of what might come next.

If your needs for a glossy graphical interface are not a driving factor, Contig from SysInternals is a robust command line utility which defrags one file at a time and results in excellent performance gains. It's fast and safe, but the command line can turn off users. Fortunately, eXcessive software has built an excellent user interface for Contig, called Power Defragmenter that turns Contig into a really usable product. The latest release of Power Defragmenter offers a very nice “TripleMode” option which runs Contig in three passes; defragmenting any remaining fragmented files with each pass.

Enhanced Defraggler Shell for Defraggler from eXcessive Software

Desktop Utilities with Diskeeper Lite V9 from Intel.

Instructions to remove nag screen from Diskeeper Lite.