Speed Up Your Windows Easily with Disk Defragmenting

Posted on July 28th, 2009 by Brian Nelson 1 Comment »

Brian Nelson Recently we talked about the Top 8 Must Have Windows Utilities. On that list was a good real-time disk defragmenter.

When it comes to making Windows faster, few things have as good of return on investment as disk defragmenting. Yet, disk defrag utilities are often the least likely to be run on the average user’s computer.

Even savvy computer users don’t run them as often as they should, no matter how many disk defragmenting programs they have stored on their hard drive.

The reason for this is simple — it takes a really long time to defragment a whole hard drive and people just don’t want to take the time.

Real-Time Disk Defragmenting

Defragmenting a large hard drive can take a long time. Not only that, many common disk defragmenters hog the system’s resources while they are doing the defragmenting. That means that not only will it take forever, but you can’t even use your computer while it’s running. No wonder, defragging hard disks is low on most people’s to do lists.

That is where real-time disk defragmenters come in. These utilities sit silently on your PC running in the background just waiting for extra unused CPU cycles to come available. When that happens, they jump in and defrag whatever files and folders they can get a hold of during those few seconds.

And, when you stop using your PC to take that phone call, then they jump in and get a whole lot of defragging done, all while you weren’t going to be using your computer anyway!

• Smart Defrag

For my money, Smart Defrag fits the bill perfectly. Once installed, Smart Defrag sits on your computer defragging and optimizing files as you work. Unlike older defragmenting utilities, Smart Defrag uses less RAM than most programs running on your computer, using less than 15 MB of RAM at most times on my PC. This means that it won’t get in the way when you are trying to power through a complex task.

The best part of Smart Defrag is that it is free, so you don’t have to worry about shelling out a hundred bucks and then more each year for upgrades.

• Diskeeper

If you prefer a commercial (paid) version with full support, Auslogic’s Diskeeper is the choice of most professionals. Diskeeper also manages to keep your disk unfragmented by running in the background.

Diskeeper is not free, however, there is a free-trial version that you can download and try out. My advice is to get both SmartDefrag and Diskkeeper. If after using both, you can see a reason to pay for the full version of Diskkeeper, then by all means do so. If not, you have a free version that is just as good.

• MyDefrag

Another option if you don’t like the idea of always on defragmentation, no matter how small, is MyDefrag. MyDefrag (previously known as JkDefrag) is a small command-line based defragmenting utility that does just as good of a job as the other utilities out there.

What makes it a worthwhile option is that it’s command-line interface makes it easy to schedule as an automated task. Set it to run when you are at lunch, or after you go home for the evening, and it will keep your computer in top shape while you aren’t around.

MyDefrag v4.1.1 was just released a couple of days ago and yes it is also free.