Ancient Brit

I just experienced something slightly odd: I attempted to defrag a large file (a .zip consisting of several hundred fragments and roughly 8G in total size) and the result was a message indicating that complete defragmentation hadn't been possible (the file was brought down to 7 fragments, which is an improvement, obviously). Free space at the time was 19G (but not contiguous - I have no info on the largest contiguous free space fragment size). So I re-analyzed the drive and suddenly found that more than half a dozen unrelated files suddenly appeared at the top of the list with 1000-2000 fragments apiece. They included Program Files such as excelcnv.exe, which wasn't running at the time, and which shows a last accessed date that's over three weeks ago, which doesn't quite make sense to me - unless Defraggler is allowed to move other files around in order to accommodate its efforts, and thus risks increasing the level of fragmentation. Unfortunately I didn't have /debug running or I'd be able to post data for analysis - sorry. I've modified the shortcut so that /debug is invoked every time now, and if I can reproduce a similar effect I'll post info. Any ideas as to whether this is expected behavior? Best, Peter

I'd echo Gantry's suggestions, but I'd also offer the workaround for the current lack of a specific "deselect selected": if you check the box to the left of the column header "Filename" (so that all files are checked) and then uncheck it, that has the effect of deselecting all currently selected entries. HTH, Peter

I noticed that Defraggler had started to run very slowly at times, after an initially stellar performance, but when I ran it in debug mode (which I now do as standard) I couldn't see anything obviously wrong. So I scheduled a drive check and lo! it came to pass that there were bad clusters... That may be one bit of housekeeping anyone who's having problems with slow performance might like to perform, just to exclude the usual suspects HTH, Peter

Hi Paul I'm a relatively new user of Defraggler - but isn't that option available from the menu item "Action"? Or were you thinking of having a list of folders (instead of files) offered for defragmenting, so that multiple folders (aka directories) could be selected in the way that files currently may be? I'd second that... Best, Peter

Ta very much Add to the list of also-rans: UltraDefrag (open source but not as good IMHO). Not to pit one group of developers with good intentions against another, of course. Now if I can just find a decent drive copying utility that can handle the dates for folders correctly under XP without requiring two passes... Best, Peter

FWIW... I tend to hammer systems by making repeated edits of large files so my drives become fragmented very quickly, and I've been looking for a decent defragger for some years. The MS-supplied defragmenter is pretty well useless, IMHO. I used Defraggler on a 136G NTFS drive under XP PRO SP2 to defrag all the files it reported as fragmented the first time and then analyzed using Disk Defragmenter, which kept showing a report of fragmented files that turned out to be folders (and Disk Defragmenter doesn't even try to defragment those). I gave Defraggler the folder names and it defragmented them very rapidly. I followed up with another Disk Defragmenter analysis, and the "files" no longer showed up as fragmented. A few rounds of that and I ended up with a drive that even Disk Defragmenter reported as unfragmented (although the free space was fragmented). Done in a fraction of the time that Disk Defragmenter takes. I've also tried Diskeeper, Norton Systemworks (back in 2000 Norton's product was good, but it's been adulterated since then), O and O Defrag Pro, and PerfectDisk, and Defraggler comes out best in my estimation. Personally, I don't care if the free space is fragmented - I'm not so much a perfectionist that I want my drives pristine at all times So my only niggle is that the default Analysis only seems to check for fragmented files; if it also highlighted fragmented folders as well (so that I didn't have to explicitly go looking for those with another tool), or alternatively gave a choice to defrag the entire drive including folders plus/minus free space, I'd be a very happy camper There are very few pieces of software that impress me, but Defraggler is now part of that select group. Best, Peter