What's the best free disk defragger, not in Windows, for NTFS andFAT drives/partitions?

On Thu, 17 Dec 2009 14:02:20 -0800, Cronos wrote:

Jerry Peters wrote:

And for most people's workloads would there be enough of a difference
to actually make a difference? If I can't tell there's a difference it
doesn't matter for any practical purposes.

People can't tell if their underwear needs changing one day from the
other either but they change them anyway because they know that there
are **** stains on them even if they can't see them.

Sounds to me like you need to stop posting here and learn to wipe your arse
properly! ;-)

Cronos wrote:
Jerry Peters wrote:

Smart people make poor decisions all the time, look at Bill Clinton,
or Tiger Woods, or even more apropos, Windows Vista.
Your very smart people at MS *really* blew it with Vista.

People who feel the need to brag that they are smarter than others are
dumb ****s with an inferiority complex.

So what are fools that lie about their killfiles ?

Cronos wrote:
Rod Speed wrote:

Doesnt happen with defragging, because the absolute vast bulk of
linear access to very large files is with media files where it takes
EXACTLY the same time to play the file whether its fragmented or not.

Not to open or move the file though.

Yes, to open a file too. And a move which just changes the directory entry too.

That's were defrag comes into play

Like hell it is.

and not FPS.

Cronos wrote
David Brown wrote

First off, everything is /never/ equal. Secondly, even if everything
else /were/ equal, who would notice or care? Unless you are in a car
race, a few percent longer or shorter on the journey is irrelevant.

I am not claiming that defragmenting has no effect - just that in the
great majority of cases, it has no /relevant/ or /noticeable/ effect.

Then I take it you never upgrade your PC because it is always fast enough for you.

More fool you. That does produce a noticeable effect if you dont do it very often.

Cronos wrote
David Brown wrote

I suppose you are implying that I am parroting from Rod's posts? I
/do/ happen to agree with him in this matter - he is not wrong /all/
the time.

Anyone who spends all day posting in this forum

No one does that.

Cronos wrote
Rod Speed wrote
Cronos wrote:
Bob Willard wrote:

I can imagine nasty combinations of workloads and platforms that
would make defragging helpful, but they must be really rare now.

In a former life (~15 years ago), doing backup from HD=tape, it was
obvious that defragging before starting a backup kept the tape mostly
streaming, while skipping the defrag step led to a lot of
shoe-shining. That system was a 486/33 with 4MB of RAM, running Win
3.1, with a 3600 RPM non-DMA FAT16 HD, and a QIC (definitely not
quick) tape connected over a shared parallel port; and, the
(Colorado) backup software was very primitive.

In that era, I used to say that any mag.tape had only two speeds:
"It streams or it sucks".

Over the past dozen or so years, I've never been able to notice any
performance gain due to defragging, which is why I always recommend
using a defragger which is free: either none, or whatever is bundled
with the OS.

Just because your eyes don't visually detect the difference does not
mean there is no difference. Can you visually tell the dif between a
2.4ghz cpu and a 2.6ghz cpu? No!

So there isnt any point in upgrading from one to the other, stupid.

But there is a measurable difference so one is faster than the other,

And only a fool upgrades from one to the other, ****wit.

Cronos wrote:
Rod Speed wrote:

Doesnt happen with defragging, because the absolute vast bulk of linear
access to very large files is with media files where it takes EXACTLY
the same time to play the file whether its fragmented or not.

Not to open or move the file though. That's were defrag comes into play
and not FPS.

In theory, yes - in practice, no.

This is really a difficult concept for you to grasp, isn't it? It is
/correct/ that it is faster to read an unfragmented file than a
fragmented one. But the difference is so small that it is /irrelevant/
in almost all situations.

When copying a large file, it is correct that an unfragmented file will
copy faster. But that difference will be drowned in other effects, such
as where on the disk the file is located, or what the machine is also
doing at the time. Wiggling the mouse will probably cause more effect.

I did a fragmentation analysis on one of my disks - I have a file that
is in regular use (it's a virtual box virtual harddrive) that has
850,000 fragments. If fragmentation was relevant, that would really
crawl - in reality, the virtual box works perfectly well.

The report also reveals how astoundingly bad Windows is at generating
fragmented files. I have one file on the disk that is 8 MB in size, and
1863 fragments. This file has never been opened (certainly not for
writing) since it was originally copied onto the disk. This makes it
clear to me how pointless defragging really is - any conceivable gains
will be quickly lost by Windows' hopeless allocator.

Cronos wrote:
David Brown wrote:

First off, everything is /never/ equal. Secondly, even if everything
else /were/ equal, who would notice or care? Unless you are in a car
race, a few percent longer or shorter on the journey is irrelevant.

I am not claiming that defragmenting has no effect - just that in the
great majority of cases, it has no /relevant/ or /noticeable/ effect.

Then I take it you never upgrade your PC because it is always fast
enough for you.

It is in fact almost correct that I never upgrade a PC - though I have
occasionally added more memory or an extra disk. It is usually far more
effective to buy a new machine when the old one is no longer sufficient
for modern software.

But when I buy a new machine - typically after five years or so - I buy
one that is /significantly/ faster and more powerful than the old one.
That makes a real difference.

Defragging in the hope of speeding up a machine is like the people who
pay most of the price of a good PC to upgrade their 3.4 GHz processor to
3.6 GHz.

Cronos wrote:
David Brown wrote:

I suppose you are implying that I am parroting from Rod's posts? I
/do/ happen to agree with him in this matter - he is not wrong /all/
the time.

Anyone who spends all day posting in this forum has a few loose screws
so if that is who you choose as your hero then I guess you have a few
loose screws upstairs also.

Did you read that, Rod? Apparently, you are my hero!

Rod Speed wrote:

And only a fool upgrades from one to the other, ****wit.

That is besides the point I was making but I guess the point was way
over your head.