As you know, disk fragmentation is a normal occurrence that happens over time as you use your hard disk. Chances are that you also know that disk fragmentation can be the source of huge performance degradation if left unchecked. As such, having Disk Defragmenter automatically set up to defragment your hard disk on a regular schedule is a tremendous performance enhancement as this means that the hard disk will never become so fragmented as to degrade performance.
Since Disk Defragmenter is designed to run on its own when your computer is idle, Microsoft decided that there was no longer a need for a fancy user interface that showed colored blocks or lines being shuffled around as the tool reorganized the clusters on the hard disk. Furthermore, there was no need for any kind of reporting to be generated by the UI.
In fact, Disk Defragmenter was designed to run without your really needing to know about it at all. Of course, many, many folks have been up in arms about this lack of feedback. They miss the colored display and the reports.
While I haven't felt this loss, I know that many of you have, and I can sympathize with that. However, I have been completely satisfied with this essentially invisible and functional Disk Defragmenter system in Windows Vista. As long as it keeps my hard disk defragmented and my system running smoothly, it's one less thing that I need to worry about. Then, last week my brother told me about Auslogics Disk Defrag.
Upon his repeated claims that Auslogics Disk Defrag is a great a tool and the fact that it is absolutely FREE, I broke down and decided to take a closer look. As I experimented with Auslogics Disk Defrag on my test system, I discovered that it is a very nice utility and it does an excellent job of quickly defragmenting a hard disk.
As I do, I'll point out some of the features that make it a worthwhile opponent to Vista's built-in Disk Defragmenter -- I'll also point out a few drawbacks.
Once you download it, installation is a snap, and you'll be ready to defrag your hard disk in no time. If you wish, you can also allow Auslogics Disk Defrag to remove temporary files before it runs.
This is a nice touch, since this is something that will indeed speed up the defragmenting procedure -- no sense wasting time defragmenting unnecessary files -- and since this is something that many folks forget to do. You can also specify a CPU setting to essentially set the priority level at which you want the program to run.
The default is Normal, but as you can see, I selected the Highest setting. While finding a sales pitch in a program is a drawback, since Disk Defrag is free, you have to figure that Auslogics has to sell other products to stay in business.
While Auslogics Disk Defrag is very quick and provides you with many useful features, it does have a couple of drawbacks when compared to Vista's built-in Disk Defragmenter. Again the file becomes fragmented when the next available cluster isn't located right next to the first one. Furthermore, each time you delete files from your hard disk, you create available clusters, thus increasing the chances for future file fragmentation-especially if the files you delete are themselves fragmented.
Over time, fragmentation can become a big problem if left unchecked. Consequently, hard disk performance suffers. Although you don't get much feedback in Vista's Disk Defragmenter user interface, the Defrag command line tool is still alive and well and is more than capable of providing you with a detailed fragmentation analysis report.
You'll then see a UAC and will need to respond accordingly. Now, you can see just how effective the automated disk defragmentation process is. Notice that on my example hard disk, the percent of file fragmentation is zero and only five folders are fragmented. While you can't really get an animated graphic of the actual defragmentation process in operation in Vista, you can watch the disk activity by using the Disk graph in the Resource Overview section of the Reliability and Performance monitor.
To launch it quickly, just click the Start button, type reliability in the Start Search text box and press [Enter]. To get an even better view, you can maximize the window. Then, click the arrow on the Disk header to reveal the Disk Detail Table. The Disk graph will be very active while Disk Defragmenter is working.
In the Disk Detail Table, you can follow along as works with each file. Admittedly, the technique isn't as graphically entertaining as say Windows 98's Disk Defragmenter or even Windows XP's Disk Defragmenter, but it does give you that same sense of accomplishment.
Greg Shultz is a freelance Technical Writer. Previously, he has worked as Documentation Specialist in the software industry, a Technical Support Specialist in educational industry, and a Technical Journalist in the computer publishing industry. Since Vista's developers have totally automated the disk defragmenting operation, they pared down the user interface in Disk Defragmenter to a simple dialog box consisting of just two buttons, as shown in Figure A -one that opens a scheduling dialog box and one that allows you to manually launch the defragmenting operation.
Figure A Vista's developers pared down the Disk Defragmenter user interface to a simple dialog box. When you do manually launch the defragmenting operation, all you see is a message telling you that the hard disk is being defragmented, as shown in Figure B.
While this simplistic user interface is aimed at making the task of defragmenting a hard disk easy for the new user, it can be a little disheartening to some of us old computer users who grew up with disk defragmenting utilities that provided all sorts of feedback.
For instance, older versions of Disk Defragmenter provided you with a fragmentation analysis report as well as an animated graphic of the actual defragmentation process in operation. Figure B When you manually launch Windows Vista's Disk Defragmenter, the only feedback you get is a message telling you that the hard disk is being defragmented. The problem of disk fragmentation Chances are that you probably already know that disk fragmentation is a normal occurrence that happens over time as you use your hard disk.
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