Program increases fragmentation

[KenC]

I downloaded this set of programs a few days ago.  I ran CCleaner, then ran Defragger, as recommended.  The program initially told me that my HDD was 11% fragmented, so I ran the full Defrag.  It took over 24 hours, and when it was finished, I re-booted my program, started Defragger again and had it analyze the drive.  It tole me that the disk was 21% fragmented.  I ran the quick defrag, and when it was done, ran the CClean program again, re-booted, and ran Defragger a third time  After another 24+ hours, the program finished, and I did another analyze, with the result that Defragger told me my disk was 34% fragmented.  I tried one more full defrag, and after another 24 hour run, Defragger tole me that the defrag was complete.  I again did a re-boot, analyzed the drive again, only to have Defragger tell me that the drive was 46% fragmented.

Just for fun, I ran an analysis with a- different defrag program, and this confirmed that the drive was 46% fragmented.

I'm thinking that I am not getting my money's worth out of Defragger, which was supposedly rated as the #1 defrag program for 2020.

Anyone else experiencing similar problems?

[nukecad]

It may be because of the size of the files themselves and the type of defrag that you are doing.

One issue is that the single word 'Defragmenting' is often 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', and means fragmenting some files to 'pack them all in' to the available clusters.

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

That consolidation could explain why your files themselves are getting more fragmented each time, to 'pack them tighter' into available clusters.

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) - but that means fragmenting some of the files themselves.

With drives getting as big as they are nowadays whole disk defragging is rapidly becoming a thing of the past, it just takes too long. (Personally I'd call anything over hour too long)
Splitting the drive into smaller partitions/drives would obviously help as you could defrag each partition/drive as needed.

Once you start talking terabytes rather than gigabytes then it's best to just defrag the files, that's what you want to do anyway to speed up read times, and it's unlikely (but possible) that you are short of free space on a terabyte drive.

[Willy2]

- What is the size of that drive and how much free space (in GB & in %) does that drive have ? Do you have an SSD ?

- What Defrag option(s) did you use ?

- Did the amount of free disk space go down after each defrag ? Is System Restore active ?

[stephen adams]

The program includes statistics on the quality of the drive, but it only works manually. The de-fragmentation program does not change the number of fragments of the current status as compared to the analysed initial setup while it is working. It also does not update the size of the files that need fragmenting, only the number of fragments and the number of files that need fragmenting.

It also incredibly slow, it tells me it will take over a day to reduce the number of fragments down from 23% of the hard drive, but I managed to reduce it by 12% by just targeting the files with the largest number of fragments first, in just two hours.

The statistics panel should show the number of fragments before and after using the program and the dates it was run, so you can see how often it needs to be run.

It would also show the efficiency of the program over time, which at the moment is miserable.

 

Compare this  with [competition software name], which completed the 8% left by CCLeaners diskfrag in just 20 minutes.

 

 

Edited July 12, 2020 by Nergal
competition software

[nukecad]

So what you are saying is that another software took 20 minutes to defrag 8%; even AFTER Defraggler had done all the hard work.

That's hardly an objective, or fair, comparison is it?

I admit that defraggler can seem slow, but have you tried running Windows own defrag/optimise recently?

I never take any notice of 'Esitmated time to complete' in any software - it's just a guess.
TBH I don't know why programmers bother including it in any software.

They are almost inevitably wrong, often wildly over-guessing by a factor of tens or hundreds.
Watch even a Windows Update, it will suddenly jump from 35% complete (or similar) to 95% complete (or similar), it hasn't done that 60% in half a second it's simply made another recalculation (guess).

[trium]

what defrag have you choosed? -> advanced -> defrag freespace (allowed fragmentation)?

have you looked at the last 8 % what files this be?

[stephen adams]

Quote

 

I have tried [removed competing product] in the past, but the latest version has too many paid for options that were free in  the original version, which is no longer available.

It also causes malwarebytes anti-virus to identify it as a possibly unwanted program (PUP) and wanting isolate it.

It runs really quickly and the figures for hours taken by me on these programs are actual values, not predicated results.

The latest one that I do like because it enables me to do what I want to do which is defrag and optimise my drive to elimminate the hold up it causes programs in working.

It is [removed competing product], which does optimise as well for free, although its estimates of finish time can be widely out.

I can set up various options, including stopping it running on start-up.

I can also stop more programs being automatically downloaded.

It works a lot faster than CCLeaners, it has a better display of what is going on and can have a limit on the size of file being dealt with.

It works on regular basis, and I can manually do a check to see if it needs to be done.

They offer a computer registry and other clean-up utilities, but I can choose to turn these off if I want to use other programs.

The thing is to try various versions and not believe the online reviews (top ten etc), as these have a advert bias.

 

[Andavari]

The site owners don't allow competing product names so they had to be edited out.

There's no such thing as a "best" defrag tool and one having a "top" rating does sound like an advert but it can also stem from allot of users downloading it on a download site, which would be better worded as: Most Downloaded - which says nothing about the software.

Some defrag tools from my past experience don't get along at all with certain systems so another alternative has to be used. Just use what you and your system likes and prefers.

[stephen adams]

The owners should be looking at improving their own program and using the programs that i mentioned as a standard to reach.