In order to use more sophisticated layout algorithms, Defraggler needs some knowledge about the structure of file system on the specific machine it is going to defrag. This data is gathered in memory in a highly efficient data structure. Unfortunately if the file system is large and complicated (has a very large number of files, fragments or a very deep folder tree) the memory consumption increases.
After the drive is analyzed the file system structure information is cached in memory (that's why you are able to switch between analyzed drives and see the list of fragmented files etc.), so after analyzing several drive the cumulative memory consumption may be large.
I don't want to downplay the amount of work Piriform have put into Defraggler. It's an excellent free tool, and they have done a huge amount of work.
With that said -- Defraggler is one of the slowest defrag engines i have ever used. What takes Defraggler hours takes Perfectdisk or Diskeeper a fraction of the time.
Besides the defrag speed -- I can analyze every single one of my drives with Perfectdisk, yet the RAM usage is no where near the same as Defraggler. Same goes for Diskeeper.
Why is Defraggler any different? If Defraggler was an insanely fast defragger, i would say "fine, the ram usage is acceptable, it's putting all the information to good use" -- But Defraggler isn't fast. It's slow. Very slow. Slower than pretty much every other free or paid defragger available.
Something is wrong. Either there's a bug, or you guys need to trim the fat off of Defraggler and optimize its memory usage, as the current system is yielding no performance increase, and still eating up insane amounts of RAM.
Why is Defraggler any different? If Defraggler was an insanely fast defragger, i would say "fine, the ram usage is acceptable, it's putting all the information to good use" -- But Defraggler isn't fast. It's slow. Very slow. Slower than pretty much every other free or paid defragger available.
To be fair, its analyzing speed is the fastest of all defrag applications I've used. But I agree with you on other points.
I am using all the other applications put out by Piriform. They are lean, simple, and fast. I really hope Defraggler will be headed in the same direction.
I'm guessing this issue has pretty much been swept under the rug at this point. Looks like a fundamental issue in the way defraggler handles resources, something that i doubt will be fixed.
Sure does look like it won't ever be fixed, nor any other critical issues (as can be seen from the lack of updates).
1.5GB of RAM usage even though no analysis could have taken place because it fails - which is a whole nother issue probably do to the RAID size - and the Properties group box that has the pie chart in the lower right still shows incorrect sizes (in bytes).
Ramzy, I too am very happy for this new update. It brings me hope. For the past month, 9 out of 16 Windows servers have been crashing with event id 2019, nonpaged memory depleted. They fail in 3 categories, 2 days, 4 days and 7 days consistently. Between poolmon and windbg kernel debugging I have resolved that it is a ntfs leak and have not been able to pinpoint the exact cause. Typically, these servers run for 200-400 days between reboots, and failure every 2 days, or 4 days is quite bothersome. I stumbled across this memory posting of yours just today, and after seeing that Piriform says it has "Improved algorithm and better memory usage" and "Improved memory leak detection mechanism" I am very hopeful this may be the answer to my issue as it has been to yours. I believe our issue is similair at different levels. Yours was the amount of memory used during the process, and mine is the leaking of memory through prolonged use which hopefully directly relates to your issue. Thank you for your constant pushing of Piriform in this forum over the past few months because nothing gets corrected unless they know about it. I am a huge fan of Piriform and also thank them for the appearance of listening to this forum even though it is bad corporate policy for them, or any other company, to say "oops". The end result is all that really matters and Piriform seems poised to want to take market share so they can be bought out by Microsoft like Sysinternals and make lots of money. I applaud their focus, fixes and all of those like you Ramzy, that combine to make a better product.
- sidenote: if this does resolve my issue, I will return to detail my experience so that others using previous versions of Defraggler can find a quicker resolution than I have found, a month later.
