*_-?? Defrag Questions ??-_*

[Lonman]

I've read a few things about XP optimizing itself on a 3 day cycle. To take full advantage of this it's my understanding that I need to defragment my drive on a fairly regular basis. What's the best Defrag utility to use to help XP achieve optimal performance? I have Diskeeper 7.0 installed and have been using it. Would it be better to uninstall it and just use Windows Defrag, or does it really matter what Defrag utility I run? (I've read that Norton's speed disk kind of defeats the purpose, but I haven't heard whether diskeeper does).

I'm not concerned about kik-ass speed while defragging (if there is such a thing). What I want to take full advantage of is the 3 day optimization cycle.

One more question on the 3 day cycle. How does XP judge 3 days? On a chronological basis, or uptime?

 

[Speed4Ever]

Both Diskeeper 7 and Raxco Perfectdisk work fine with the XP optimizations. If you have DK7, you should be just fine, and theres no real reason to get a different one if its doing the job for you.

IMO, if your over 2% fragmentation between defrag runs, you need to do it more often. When I was running it, I set it to defrag every evening after I go to bed, so it wont interfere with anything.

 

[existenz]

meh...

I don't find much of a performance boost after defragging with Diskeeper 7.0

maybe, that's just me...

 

[Speed4Ever]

One more question on the 3 day cycle. How does XP judge 3 days? On a chronological basis, or uptime?

AFAIK, its chronological. I havent heard anything otherwise so far.

You can manually run the app optimization by going to run > rundll32.exe advapi32.dll, ProcessIdleTasks

You can run the boot optimization by running DEFRAG C /D


Hope this helps

 

[Lonman]

Thx for the info Speed. Is there any way to get Diskeeper (or windows defrag) to only defrag files instead of picking everything up and moving it to the beginning of the partition? Seems like I can defrag and in no time at all XP is putting stuff back where it wants it, fragmenting whatever it's moving like crazy.

 

[Speed4Ever]

Originally posted by Lonman
Thx for the info Speed. Is there any way to get Diskeeper (or windows defrag) to only defrag files instead of picking everything up and moving it to the beginning of the partition? Seems like I can defrag and in no time at all XP is putting stuff back where it wants it, fragmenting whatever it's moving like crazy.

I'm not sure what your wanting here. Pretty much any defragger will push everything to the beginning of the map to defragment the free space. As far as the files that XP optimizes, these files are listed in the layout.ini file. DK7 ignores these files and allows XP to with them as it pleases. DK7 will not interfere with the optimization layout that XP uses.

AFAIK, theres no layout options in DK7. But where would you want the files to be, or what type of layout are you talking about.

I'm not sure I understand your question...

 

[Lonman]

I based the question on what Norton's speed disk used to do in the 9x family. I could choose to have it just optimize the files without picking everything up and moving it to the front of the drive. But, as long as...

DK7 will not interfere with the optimization layout that XP uses.

then i won't worry about it, thx.

 

[bleedink]

ive used both...diskeeper 7 works the best. norton for some reason starts screwing with the mbr and that screws with the defragmentation for some reason...if u want to confirm this just analyze the contents of yr drives using both...youll find dk to be much less fragmented. I was suprised by this myself. I particularly recommend dk if u are using the bootvis tool from microsoft as it doesnt seem to reverse what that does like norton utililites...

 

[Lonman]

It will be slow on its FIRST run

Understated my friend . I was beginning to think it was fragmenting new stuff and defragmenting it just to piss me off, lol (just kidding). But that first one was a long one.

I'm running Diskeeper every day now and it hardly gets started before it gets done. I think once I get my temporary files all switched over to a *ramdisk i'll even reduce that. XP is definantly running better and better.


*I'm waiting to see if AR Soft can get theirs up to their stated goal of 2gig before making all the necessary changes. Since first contact (not the movie) we've been keeping in touch through the email. They stated they don't have an XP machine available to them for testing. I offered up a whole forum full of testers, lol. When I can get it running in the range i'm looking for, then I'll do all the changes and will probably get very little fragmentation going on using it for my temp folder(s).

 

[bleedink]

putting the temp files on ramdisk sounds great! anyone know how to do this or would be willing to email me the answer...doesnt SOUND that hard anyway! ha ha...bleedink@aol.com if u have sum answerz fer me...

 

[bleedink]

apk thanks for yr help...maybe a little out of my league for a moment but its in the cards soon im sure...you seem quite knowledgable about 'things' and reading yr security article and applying some of the tweaks was very enlightening...thanks