Defraggler's defragging logic seems off

Defraggler
1

Hi all,

Long time supporter of Piriform. Even bought their software a little while back, and donated back in the day when the software used to be 100% free.

I've tried for a long while to like Defraggler but i'm running into issues, namely two main issues: Defrag logic and low utilisation.

First and foremost the defragging engine seems to be very slow despite using next to no resources. Right now it's defragging my games HDD (7200RPM mechanical HDD), and it has taken hours, and there are several more hours to go, but it's currently using next to no CPU, and only 1-5% HDD (screenshot below).

The second bigger issue is the defragging logic. My games HDD isn't used very often, over the course of a few days it MIGHT get a few kilobytes worth of fragmented files (i.e., Steam log files or something. Usually fragmentation after a day or two is only 5 or 10 fragments totalling 100KB or less)

If i defrag my games drive on Monday, it'll take several hours to finish. On Wednesday i'll analyse the drive and find a couple fragments/few kilobytes of fragmented text files and such. If i defrag the drive again, rather than moving these meainingless and small files to the bottom of the drive, or compacting the files as tightly as possible, Defraggler instead begins to defrag the ENTIRE hard drive from the very top, moving ALL files down and slowly re-ordering everything. This means that defragging with only a couple kilobytes of fragmented files equals to several hours of defragging.

On top of the issue above (low utilisation, slow to finish), this also puts a lot of needless stress on the hard drive, as it's moving a bunch of files that really don't need to be moved, for what amounts to virtually zero improvement in performance and read time (i have tested with Crystal Diskmark and other software), which means that it will result in your HDD's life expectancy being reduced, again, for virtually no improvement in performance.

Compare this to [competing software] -- All of these solutions are more intelligent in that they won't completely move every single file in the entire HDD in order to defrag a few kilobytes of worthless text log files.

Can Piriform comment on this?

See screenshot below. Defragging an already defragged HDD a day later.

1. Notice the low utilisation.

2. Notice how many hours it's going to take.

3. Notice there are 0 fragments, and rather than filling gaps with files from the bottom of the drive to make sure everything is contiguous, Defraggler is instead moving every single file on the entire HDD.

FrAxERk.jpg

2

Hi, I don't have an answer for you, but I did moderate your post. Please don't mention competition software in the forum. Thanks

3

If you know that there are only a few fragmented files then-

Analyse

View files

Select all

Defrag selected

Takes minutes to do.

OK you have defragged the files not the full drive.

so what, you won't notice any performance difference.

4

Hi, I don't have an answer for you, but I did moderate your post. Please don't mention competition software in the forum. Thanks

I don't think removing the names of competing software is fair. You don't see Lenovo deleting posts that mention Dell or HP, nor do you Sony removing threads about LG or Samsung TV's on their forums.

I'm using them as examples so that Piriform might look further into the issue. Defraggler is a free piece of software, and compared to "COMPETING SOFTWARE", it's much cheaper, therefore it's not really a threat to mention them.

Regardless i doubt my post will make any difference, but either way it's poor form.

If you know that there are only a few fragmented files then-

Analyse

View files

Select all

Defrag selected

Takes minutes to do.

OK you have defragged the files not the full drive.

so what, you won't notice any performance difference.

1. The software should be smart enough to do this.
2. I don't want to manually go through all the files it finds and defrag them.
3. Manually defragging random small files creates gaps in the drive and lowers the amount of contiguous space which will result in more fragmentation.
4. For the sake of ease of use, for new users, and for general simplicity, the software should automatically figure out what to do rather than defragging for 9 hours, then defragging again for another 9 hours.
5. In "normal" usage scenarios the software should analyze the disk map and figure out how to defrag in the least amount of moves possible. If there's a 30KB file in the middle of the drive, the 300GB of data beneath it shouldn't be moved down. Again, the software should be figuring out how to defrag in the most efficient manner (in the least number of moves possible).
edit: Also, still doesn't explain the low utilisation / slow defrag speed in comparison to "COMPETING SOFTWARE".
Finally, i realise you'll have counter-points to everything i mentioned, but at the end of the day it comes down to improving the software, making it more efficient, easier to use, and generally more polished. Yes we can go back and forth about how you can locate individual files to defrag them, but again, it's about the usability of the software. If we're going to manually defrag all files, why not remove the entire "defrag" option then? How many features can be stripped before the point is no longer valid?
5

Good to see nearly 2 months on that Piriform doesn't see fit to respond or even acknowledge the problem, nor any real discussion about the issue from the general user base.

It's a sad state of affairs when posts and threads need to be censored by overzealous moderators, so as to ensure other, more capable programs, are not directly mentioned. God forbid users are made aware of more functional alternatives.

I think the simple take away here is that Piriform aren't interested in improving their software with respect to competing against other offerings on the market.

6

Good to see nearly 2 months on that Piriform doesn't see fit to respond or even acknowledge the problem, nor any real discussion about the issue from the general user base.

It's a sad state of affairs when posts and threads need to be censored by overzealous moderators, so as to ensure other, more capable programs, are not directly mentioned. God forbid users are made aware of more functional alternatives.

I think the simple take away here is that Piriform aren't interested in improving their software with respect to competing against other offerings on the market.

I completely agree, having this exact issue among many others. Gonna switch from Defraggler, it's nowhere near as good as it once was. Thanks Piriform for pushing away your loyal customers...

7

Morning everyone.

Firstly Ramzy, please accept my apologies for not responding to this. It was by no means intentional. I do try to look at as many threads as I can but inevitably, some slip through the net :(

Personally, I'm not sure as to the exact mechanics of Defraggler and how it works out the process to use. I will speak with the development team about this to try and get a better understanding which I can feed back to you. In the mean time, could you please PM me with the names of the competitors that you felt were doing the job that you required? This will allow us to take a look specifically regarding your question.

I would like to add that the competition rule has been in place for a long time, so please don't feel that Nergal was being overzealous, as he was just enforcing this.

As soon as I've got some more information, I will let you know :)

Tom

8

Tom, since you're here may I ask you a couple of questions?

First question, how come Defraggler detects my SSD as an HDD? (There have been quite a few posts about this and none with a definitive answer, seems to be an ongoing issue)

Second question, as Ramzy said. How come Defraggler has extremely low CPU and HDD usage causing it to defrag very slowly? I used competitor and competitor just to see if it was my drive, but they both finished in around 1/4 the amount of time that Defraggler did. And when it comes to Defraggler taking 24+ Hours to defrag a partition and only around 5-10 for the others, it's a pretty irritating thing to experience.

I tested these a few weeks apart to make sure that Defraggler didn't do all the work which may have made the defragging faster for the other software.

9

Hi razerphynx!

I'd be more than happy to help with these. There are some detection issues with Defraggler we regret :( Could you please download Speccy off our website https://www.piriform.com/speccy and let me know if this too reads the drive type incorrectly? If you could also tell me the make and model of the drive that would be particularly useful.

As for your second question, I'm going to speak to the development team about this so I'll get back to you both when I hear back from them :)

10

Thank your for the quick reply.

So I downloaded and installed Speccy and it does indeed recognize my SSD. It is a LITEONIT LCS-256M6S, just a random 2.5" 256GB SSD I took out of a laptop. (238GB LITEONIT LCS-256M6S 2.5 7mm 256GB (SSD) according to Speccy)

Windows' built-in defragmenter (also considered a competitor?) also recognizes it is an SSD, so I thought it was a bit strange.

11

Thanks for that information, I've passed it up to the development team.

They've assured me that this is an issue they're hoping to fix but couldn't put a firm date on it :(

They did also tell me that Defraggler should apply logic to the defrag, however it's possible that it perceives a better overall drive health from defragmenting the entire drive even if it will only save a tiny amount of space. I'm not sure why the other applications listed would perform 'better', although I presume they're less sensitive to very minor improvements to save realigning the whole drive for very small gain, unlike Defraggler. This could be seen as a positive or a negative I think, depending on how you look at it, although personally I think that defragging a whole drive for next to no gain seems rather pointless and a waste of drive life.

I've made the suggestion on your behalf therefore, that there should be an option to have a threshold to applied which will only defragment recently edited files, when the overall gain from defragmenting is low.

Thanks,

Tom

12

Thank you very much for all this help.

Will have to wait until this issue is fixed I guess.

Cheers.

13

Any updates? Been over a year and this issue still hasn't been fixed.