Defraggler seems to leave data scattered after hours of processing it's system

I just recently bought Defraggler so I'm not sure what to expect. However from my experience with similar products in the past, I expected that after several hours of processing my data, defragging and placing it most efficiently, that the graphic would show, no more defragged blocks, and the data represented would be contiguous, not scattered all over my drive. Additionally when it finished after two passes to make it appear as I expected it still shows similarly and shows 13% FRAGMENTED!

I've tried quick defrag, regular defrag and defrag on unused blocks and it still appears the same. What am I doing wrong or is this normal? Thanks for your help. Ron

Defraggler as default runs a combination of defragment and consolidate. (They are two different things although both are refered to as simply defragmenting).

Defragmenting puts each individual file into one piece so that it can be accessed (slightly) more quickly.

Consolidation put all the files as close together as possible (contiguous) to save space on the drive.

As said, by default Defraggler does a combination of the two to try and give you the best of both. - But you can force it to do either one or the other.

If you do an Analyze and then 'View files', select the files and defrag selected, that that will defrag the files without consolidation.

If instead you go to the menu at the top and select Action>Advanced>Defrag Freespace that should consolidate the files and make them as contiguous as possible.

There are two options for Defrag Free Space,

Defrag Freespace - will keep the files in one piece and so may leave some empty space in clusters.

Defrag Freespace (allow fragmantation) - will attempt to fill up the clusters entirely, which means that some files will be fragmented to fill them up.

Note that some files are 'pegged' to locations on the disc and so cannot be consolidated in this way.

Sometimes that is because they are in use (certain Windows defender files for example), sometimes Windows has pegged them to a specific location (The Windows pagefile being the classic example).


Try a 'Boot Time Defrag' from the Settings menu to see if it will defrag/consolidate those.

What type of drive is it (HDD or SSD) and how big?

I expect it to be in the TB range if it's taking hours to defrag.

Here's a screenshot of my C drive drivemap after a Defrag Freespace and then a files only defrag.

The analyze took about 30 seconds, defrag freespace about 2 mins (it was pretty good already), the files only defrag took about 15 mins but I was also working online while it was running.

As you can see it's now reporting 0% fragmented, most of the clusters are contiguous, but there are freespace gaps because some files are 'pegged' to their locations on the disc.

Note in particular those 4 lower clusters, they have system files in them and never get moved. (Although a 'Boot Time Defrag' from 'Settings' may be able to do that, I've not run that in a while. - I do know that's the only way to defrag the Windows Pagefile, my pagefile used to be in two blocks but as you can see it's now consolidated).

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This is about as complete an answer to a technical question as I've ever had in my experience. Thank you so much for the time you would take to explain this. Now I have a reference point to come back to as I use the system even if it is not totally clear to me as the neophyte I am at the moment.

I sincerely appreciate you doing this for me. Thanks, Ron

PS My drive is a 500 gig HDD only using about 314g for data and about 185g free. Seems like an extraordinarily long time to process to me at about an eight hour average so far. ?

Don't know why it's taking so long for you.

If the disc/files were badly fragmented to start with it could take a few long runs to get it all organised.

The other main factors are how much free space there is on the disc (the more the better), how much RAM you have (the more...), how fast your CPU is (the faster ...), and if you or your computer is doing anything else at the same time.

And of course how you personally use your computer and what for.

As I say Defraggler tries to do the best of both defrag and consolidate so if you defrag once a week then things should get more organised over time and change the balance, and so get quicker to run. (Like I said above about my consolidation already being pretty good, so Defraggler spent more time on newly defragmented files).

Mine had more fragmented files after it finished than it started with!

4 hours ago, JaceNZ said:
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		Mine had more fragmented files after it finished than it started with!
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Did you read the second post above?

When you are defragmenting (consolidating) a <strong>whole disc</strong> it always means that your <strong>files</strong> will be more fragmented.

I'll try to explain it a bit deeper:

It depends just how you have run the defrag.

There are 2 different methods depending on what results you are looking to get and by default Defraggler does a combination of both, - but it can be set to do either/or.

The issue is that the word 'Defragmenting' is inaccurately used to mean two different things, two things which are mutually exclusive.

  1. Getting each file into one contiguous piece, rather than split across clusters. (So that they load marginally faster).
  2. Getting all the files into as small a storage space as possible. (To give more free clusters on the disc).

The first is 'Defragmenting' and means that some clusters on the disc will inevitably have some unused space.

The second is correctly termed 'Consolidation', <u>and means fragmenting some files to 'pack them all in' to the available clusters.</u>

So Consolidation may/will leave each file more fragmented than it was before, but the disc as a whole is less fragmented. (ie. with most of the white space in one piece).

TBH Consolidation is rarely needed these days, drives are big enough that it's not needed.

But people like to see it on the chart displayed, they like to see big blocks of colour with no white 'holes'.

Consolidation also takes much longer, especially on todays (multi) TB drives - simply because they are big drives.

You are probably not short of space on a TB drive, so those in the know do a 'Files only' defragment which is the quicker option to use.

So you can have all your files in one piece each, or have them packed into the smallest disc space by splitting some up. - You can't have both, and which you choose depends on what you want to do.

Defraggler does a combination of the two by default, but for more control you can specify which one you want instead.

In Defraggler:

'Defrag Drive' will do some of both, as it sees fit to get the best result.


'Defrag Files' will make the files contiguous (#1 above).


'Defrag Free Space' (Advanced) will consolidate the files to give the most free clusters. (#2 above).

PS. None of this will 'magically' make more space on your disc, it's all just moving files about.