Defraggler doesn't work on my computer, except in safe mode and in XPE mode when I boot my laptop off Bart's PE Rescue disk. That's okay since my theory is that it's better to defrag drives offline so that none of the files are locked.
My question is if there's any problem defragging my system partition in this way since presumably Defraggler was not designed with XPE in mind?
Will it also defrag all the system meta files; reg hives, MFT, USN Journal files, etc. when they are offline and optimize their placement?
fwiw, I'm using a portable version of Defraggler 1.11 that I run off a USB flash drive rather than the boot CD itself.
JkDefrag's help file provides the following tip:
Tip: Reboot before running JkDefrag. This will release files that are in use, so they can be defragmented. You can also run JkDefrag in Windows safe mode (press F8 while booting) to defrag even more files.
I assume the above reasoning applies to Defraggler too. And if defragging in safe mode is better, then defragging from a BartPE boot disk or a bootable USB flash drive should be ideal, no?
But let me pose the original question another way: If I remove a hard drive from my desktop, power it up on my laptop as an external drive, and defrag it, will defraggler optimize it correctly*, and how does it deal with the meta files? (both computers have Windows XP Pro with SP3)
*by correctly I just mean optimally for use by the desktop, or the way the desktop would itself defrag its own C: partition, if it could move 'locked' files too.