Depending on how much your machine gets used by fragmenting apps you might
need to defrag more often than once a week. Perfect Disk and Diskeeper will
ID areas you haven't defragged when you allow the default defragger in Vista
to run. I know they are far better than the watered down defragger that
Execsoft made for XP. There is a chart comparing them that Diskeeper puts
on their site. There are specific limitations of the Defraggers in XP and
afik the same limitation of the watered down one in Vista. No doubt time
will make it easier to find direct comparisons of the Vista Defragger and
perhaps time will make it easier for MSFT to get off it's very slow butt and
publish information on key Vista utilities like Win RE, System Restore, and
System File Checker.
In Vista the MFT (Master File Table) can get highly fragmented and there is
no way for the Vista defragger to defrag it. Some believe overtime this
will hurt the performance of the new Vista Transactional NTFS File System
and this topic is debated on threads all over the web. In Vista, defrag
runs at low CPU priority and uses low priority I/O which helps ensure
minimal impact and high responsiveness for the rest of the system. This is a
big change from XP where the system was more or less unusable when defrag
was running. The interface has been dumbed down in Vista to make it usable
by anyone that can type defrag into search.
Colin did not mention it, but I don't see any mechanism at all for boot time
defrag of the paging file or Master File Table in the XP or Vista Defrag.
Information on why you need to do so periodically is below in the Extreme
Tech Article.
Hacking Windows XP: Speed Up Your Boot: Using Other Shareware Boot Defrag
Programs
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...1786010,00.asp
Why is it crucial to defrag your drives daily?
Disk fragmentation causes crashes, slowdowns, freeze-ups and even total
system failures. The number one reason for performance bottlenecks is
fragmentation. Even the best hardware will eventually slow down unless the
drive is defragmented daily.
The disk drive is by far the slowest of the three main components of your
computer: CPU, memory and disk. If the drive isn't defragmented the fastest
CPU in the world won't improve your system's performance, because
information from the disk simply can't be delivered fast enough.
Manual defragmentation just isn't practical-who has time to defrag every
system, every day? Manual defragmentation is a break-fix situation.
Automatic defragmentation with Diskeeper, the Number One Automatic
Defragmenter, is the only true defrag solution. Diskeeper 10 uses "Set It
and Forget It"®, Smart Scheduling and I-FAAST technologies to defrag drives
as needed, keeping your systems running as fast as they did when they were
brand-new.
The various editions of Diskeeper run on the Intel® x86 platform (including
the Intel PentiumT and Pentium-compatible CPUs from other manufacturers)
running Microsoft Windows XP (Professional / Home / Tablet PC / Media Center
editions), Windows 2000 (all Professional and Server editions), Windows
Server 2003 (all editions), Windows NT 4.0 (all Server and Workstation
editions), and Windows 95 / 98 / Me. For more information on compatibility
read the Microsoft Knowledgebase article about Diskeeper, view our product
compatibility list, or select the type of environment your computers run in
from the following choices: Home User, Small Business or
Corporate/Government.
Third-party disk defragmenter tools for Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, and
Windows 2000
http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;130539
Disk Defragmenter Limitations in Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows
Server 2003
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/227463/
Diskeeper versus windows xp defrag
http://reviews.cnet.com/5208-6142-0....sageID=1478909 http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=129934
Diskeeper References and Documentation
http://www.diskeeper.com/products/do...umentation.asp
Diskeeper Comparison Utility
http://www.diskeeper.com/downloads/survey.aspx?PId=62 http://www.diskeeper.com/downloads/survey.aspx?PId=62
Magic Defrag vs. Diskeeper
http://www.infopackets.com/channels/...eper_et_al.htm
CH
"Colin Barnhorst" <colinbarharst(remove)@msn.com> wrote in message
news:OswX0hwvGHA.324@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
> Because the defragger in Vista runs once a week on its own.
>
> "thecreator" <thecreator@home.com> wrote in message
> news:ePlshxtvGHA.1512@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
>> Hi All,
>>
>> Windows XP Home Edition Service Pack 2
>>
>> Windows Vista -32-Bit Ultimate
>>
>> Windows XP Home Edition, states that Windows XP Home Edition should be
>> Defragmented. So I booted into Windows Vista in order to Defragment
>> Windows XP Home Edition Partition, so the files to be moved would not be
>> in used.
>>
>> Also makes it easier to empty the \Temp folders, so no files would be
>> in use warning. This works great.
>>
>> But Windows Vista reports that the drive in question, does not need to
>> be Defragmented.
>>
>> Why the difference?
>>
>>
>> --
>> thecreator
>>
>
>