Okay, boiler plate critique for ALL developers ... first, read the book "Don't Make Me Think" http://www.sensible.com/dmmt.html and test your software on-screen interface design using Dan Bricklin's Demo program http://www.bricklin.com/softwaregarden.htm before asking us to chew on your offering here, then hit at least these handful of STANDARD (5ish) targets:

1 - KNOW YOUR COMPETITION AND YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE: If you need this explained to you, then you don't belong on GOTD yet, you are NRFPTY ("nerf putty", Not Ready For Prime Time Yet).

2 - RESIZE, COLORS, DANCING BALONEY: Allow window display resizing: outside, to use our large monitors or small netbook monitors; inside, to show contents so we don't have to scroll, and to see entire details of the thing we need to make decisions on; offer Windows or default colors; no dancing baloney -- don't look like a http://www.fisher-price.com/ kindergarten toy.

3 - MENUS, REGISTRATION, UPDATES: Use standard menus across the top, including File/Print/Exit, Edit/Cut/Paste/Search, View/Zoom/Style, Tools/Options/Settings/Preferences/Defaults, and Help/Register/Update/About and so on; don't hide or complicate the process of registration and showing that registration is successful; don't offer to update if updating will nullify our registration or convert us to short-term trial-ware, let us decide if we want to update or upgrade to a later release version of free-ware if that will diminish certain features.

4 - FLOW, DETAILS, CONTROL: Present everything left to right, top to bottom, show us where we came from, where we will go if we click on anything, allow us to go back and forth as we figure out your tools; don't obscure anything, don't take action without warning, don't hide what you are going to do, tell us what you found before you change anything; always offer to let us select (1) MS Windows defaults, (2) prior setting as found, or (3) your recommended setting; tell us details, always include the ability to scrutinize and control details.

5 - PARTICIPATE: Join in the discussion, don't ignore us, don't make us have to tell you these standard criticisms over and over, which brings us back to #1 above.

==========

I'd like to know what other people's lists are, perhaps we can expand a boiler plate to more efficiently let sub-standard programs know where they stand in one fell swoop and then move the discussion to what really interests us in the product market segment ... which I think we do anyway, disregarding programs that don't seem worthy of much consideration, and then just chatting amongst ourselves, which offers a wealth of information for that developer to see where they missed their target, and empowering them to come up with something appropriate on their next try out. Nothing is ever a complete and total waste of time here, is it?

Perhaps GOTD could create an ongoing, live voting tally questionnaire of our preferences on a page we all could look at, which would be a gold mine for developers who want to get it right before they start distribution.

==========

A note on my background: I grew up in an IBM family, where my dad, an industrial designer, was tasked with going from one IBM factory to another, instructing the newly hired industrial designers, fresh out of Detroit design schools, that there will be no tail fins on IBM products(!), the colors will be standardized, the nomenclature will be standardized, the logo will be standardized, and so on. Years later when I got into the industry, the IBM PC division offered to publish anyone's PC software under the IBM logo, and they had detailed specifications on how programs should be formatted, function, documentation, and presentation on screen. Okay, a little strict, but really, why reinvent the File/Edit/View/Tools/Help menu in some new fangled way every time just to alienate the end user over and over?

If somebody comes back to look, since I was asked but I was too busy to respond yesterday:

Yes, MyDefrag does do a regular Windows mode, run-time MFT defrag. Perfect example: I use a single master image (sans pagefile & hiberfile) for a grouping of workstations (same MB, video & ethernet, different HD & RAM sizes though) to clone at the beginning of a course. Because of the different RAM & HD sizes, after cloning, I manually enable the appropriate swapfile size (and hibernation if so inclined). Then run MyDefrag after the reboot. Because of the different pagefile & hiberfile sizes, MyDefrag actually relocates the MFT in some instances.

As far as the pagefile is concerned, if you set up a permanent, fixed & appropriately sized swapfile when you first set up a Windows system, it will never get fragmented until it ABENDs (BSOD) - one of the reasons I gave up on Agnitum Outpost Firewall and family - it crashes Windows in a spectacular fashion once in a while, usually after the system has been on a few days and Outpost had 4-6 million page faults. At that point, you are better off reloading the system.

My recommendation for SysInternals' PageDefrag was more for the ability to defrag the "locked" system logs at boottime, since they can never be defragged otherwise. But for 2K & XP, I consider it a must.

I did not mention Executive Systems' Diskeeper as I do recommend it for true Windows Servers, but not workstations (as appropriate for the GiveawayOfTheDay audience). It is they only recommendation I have for background service defragmenters, it is one of the few that properly "notify" Windows that it is active and results in proper volume snapshots. However, because of the way it works, it may cause problems for power management on laptops, and there are some contention issues with applications that have light / infrequent but immediate disk access needs on a lightly loaded workstation.

I use Winpatrol and from there I can control which programs will run in background. Not a bad software.

Not being a techie or computer geek, why would I want anything else than what is included in Win 7 64 with regard to defragging. There must be at least a dozen recommendations here for defrag software that I am assuming does exactly or very much the same job. And why would the average joe or joyce want an explanation of how each individual programme works as is suggested. All I want to see are comments from people with the knowledge to make a constructive recommendation of whether the software is worth downloading, not necessarily this particular software but all 'giveaways' instead of a diatribe of inconsequential comments.

I take it all back - 3 downloads, 3 crashes installing, and finally asking for all by my "mothers shoe size" just to activate, all I can say is thank goodness for REVO unstaller.....whew

Well too may comments to read but one in particular caught my
attention that said.......NTFS file system don't need defragging.

Where has that guy been.....I defrag every-time I use CC Cleaner
or any of the other cleaners....The point is "he" must never
look at how many fragmented files there are in even a day or so. Looks
like an apple orchard among the millions of trees. WHEW....prove
me wrong. As to who's best, don't know but as for disk loading up
with deleted junk, I use a file shredder with everything and
keeps the disk pretty "empty"....guess I could do a wipe but my way works just fine.

A defrag software that has to be "always on" is a bad idea.

It is not necessary to achieve 100% defragmentation result all of the time. What is the point? After you use the PC for a while, it is no longer at 100%. Don't bluff yourself.

Someone mentioned that we should not keep changing defrag software rapidly and very often. I agree. Stick to one you like for a few months, and if you really find a better one later, then stick with that for some time.

It does not make sense to defrag with DefraggerSoftware-A; and then immediately follow up to defrag the same hard drive with DefraggerSoftware-B.

Even a portable freeware can do a lot.
http://www.auslogics.com/en/software/disk-defrag/features/

No problems whatsoever installing and activating the software under Windows 7 64 bits SP1.

Thanks for the great program.

I've tried this and it seems like nothing out of the ordinary. I also run AVG tuneup.. Which I am extremely happy with though you pay a yearly lease. AVG tuneup.. Keep your internet performance good and is VERY user friendly.

Although. As this is free. I'm sure it'll do on my younger brothers computer. :))

Whoops! I meant "clunky" not clinky (is that even a word?)!

As others have pointed out, the main problem with this software is it insists on running all the time, and there appears to be no easy way to stop it or exit the program! The interface is pretty clinky and painful too. I gave it a fair tryout, but then felt compelled to award it a thumbs down, and quickly uninstall it. Not an "excellent tool" at all, imho.

#21 'The Major';

Quote "Nothing wrong with de-fragmenting ssd and ssd hybrid drives.

I suggest ‘J’ you go read up deeper on the subject rather than listening to the writing of wannabee’s." Unquote.

Dear sir, I have gone and read very deep on the subject, also conferring with others directly who are more knowledgeable than myself (not wannabee's), despite me being a qualified and certified computer technician with over thirty years experience with computers. I have yet to meet anyone who knows everything about computers and thereby admit to not knowing everything myself, happy to continue to learn - one reason I read and take notice of well informed posts in this web page most days. What I will not do is make statements without firm foundation.
Instead of 'listening to the writing', I tend to listen to intelligent people speaking and read the writings of intelligent people so, with due respect, I shall ignore any further comment(s) you may make, suggesting 'you go read up deeper' on any subject before you make ill informed nefarious statements. Whilst there is an argument for defragmenting SSD Hybrids (because they have platters), you have no plausible argument for defragmenting straight SSD's (as other people have already (more elaborately) explained in posts above).
Forgive me for not saluting.

Installed with no problems on Vista32. Registration process is decidedly Ashampoo. Ran well, no problems noted. Checked the results against Auslogics Pro and found it did defragment very well.

Three complaints: The engine is much too slow compared to the competition, in analyzing and defragging. The interface could be user friendlier and the 'blocks and magnifying glass' is annoying. Finally, the GUI will not open into full screen. This is some kind of trendy design point I'm seeing a lot of lately. KNOCK IT OFF! You're killing my old eyes...

bem

Earlier, Deborah1962 wrote,

"... I once allowed my computer go for about a year (Win XP SP3/NTFS) without defragging ... Defraggler ... analyzing my system said my computer was 84% fragmented ... I’m not an IT major, not a “techie” or a computer geek, but ... shooting for under 10% or 0 ... I wound up reformatting ..."

Geesh, you're right, you are not a techie, but you have a great deal of time!

ANY of the freebies listed above would have resolved your challenge quietly in the background while you were away from your computer without wasting your time.

But I also like watching the little blocks dance all over the screen as a defragger puts my drive in order.

I have a 7 MB partition at the end of my hard drive and I watch each program defrag it differently -- very mesmerizing and peaceful, like playing Tetris without having to actually play.

Anyway, this SIMPLE software is just the thing for you!

Download SuperEasy Live Defrag now:

http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/download/?id=35104

==========

Earlier, jmjsquared wrote,

"... Do I understand correctly that JKdefrag was able to access and defrag the MFT on a hot drive, while the System was loaded?! Did you give your Student an “F”? :-) ..."

There are 250,000+ responses to a web search for [ jkdefrag mft ] and they explore the ambiguities of just what is an MFT, as even Microsoft refuses to say, see discussion such as http://www.mydefrag.com/forum/index.php?topic=1460.0 and http://support.microsoft.com/kb/961095 and http://www.condusiv.com/blog/post/2006/11/07/The-Mystery-of-the-Disappearing-MFT-Reserved-Zone!.aspx and so on, the last reference saying:

In Windows XP the behavior of the reserved zone changed. It went from being a hard coded percentage of the volume (default of 12.5%), to a dynamic extension called, by Microsoft, an "NTFS internal hint". While Diskeeper received information on this change early in XP's development, little data has been published on this from Microsoft ...

http://download.microsoft.com/download/e/b/a/eba1050f-a31d-436b-9281-92cdfeae4b45/2kuptoXP.doc

... If you are curious as to the current size of this reserved zone on your NTFS volumes you can use fsutil.exe (file system utility), or for easier-to-read information (i.e. not in hexadecimal!), use NTFSinfo.exe from Microsoft Sysinternals:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897424

We're all probably just talking about our different perspectives and experiences on subtly different things, even if the jargon overlaps.

I've been using the free Smart Defrag Two from Win XP to Win 7 computers and it runs quietly in the background, pausing it's defragging or not starting until the computer's been idle for a selectable amount of time (default 5 min) or when resource usage is a selectable amount (default 60%) or higher. It can be set to do any internal or UBS internal drives. You can also schedule a full defrag at regular times. For laptops it can be set to not run when on battery. Works a lot better for me than a $19.95 product.

@ #42-CompNetTeach: Great info, thanks.

Like Russinovich's PageDefrag, Diskeeper (running as a Service with a mere 13MB Private Set) provides for a "boot time" defragmentation of
MFT, Pagefile and hiberfil.sys with/without CHKDSK + /f /r switches; and since, like today's giveaway, it proactively prevents fragmentation in realtime, throttling cycles, I/O and RAM usage, why not have it/them always running in the background rather than doing periodic defrags?

Opinion, please & thanks.

Do I understand correctly that JKdefrag was able to access and defrag the MFT on a hot drive, while the System was loaded?! Did you give your Student an "F"? :-)

I once allowed my computer go for about a year (Win XP SP3/NTFS) without defragging it (namely thought about it then forgot) and it got so slow it refused to open any of my 3 browsers. I decided to open the defrag program and check to see how fragmented it was. I had downloaded and installed Defraggler months before but never used it. The program after analyzing my system said my computer was 84% fragmented. I'm not an IT major, not a "techie" or a computer geek, but, I will say when the computer won't even open a browser and it registers 84% fragmentation, it's time to defragment the hard drive. It took Defraggler 4 hours (after I ran CCleaner of course) and even after that program ran it's paces, I still had 20% fragmentation. I rebooted and downloaded a free trial of Diskkeeper which brought down the fragmented files down only 3%, I still had 17% fragmented files (I was shooting for under 10% or 0 would have been better). I wound up reformatting because no matter what I did or used, I couldn't get it down below 15%. I have achieved a 0% fragmented hard drive before but it's taken a format and a diligent search for a decent defragger. I am still on the search, Defraggler was OK, I just know I have downloaded defragmenting programs that bettered Defraggler's with the unfortunate side-effect that while they were excellent in defragmenting the hd, they cost a lot of money for the program. I will give this one a whirl, I've already achieved 0% and know it can be done again. My defragmented hard drive is nowhere near 84% but it's fragmented enough to give this a decent trial.

Technical -- we ARE a savvy bunch, aren't we? ;-)

Earlier, CompNetTeach wrote:

"... At boot time, SysInternals (Microsoft now) PageDefrag will defrag the pagefiles (XP & earlier), hiberfile, and logfiles (all Windows versions) that no other defragger will touch ..."

How do you get PageDefrag to work in Vista and Windows 7? Manual entry into HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\BootExecute: [pgdfgsvc C 1 ] after manually copying the pgdfgsvc.exe file from another computer to C:\Windows\System32 ?

Yes, there ARE other DOS-based pre-Windows defraggers out there, Sysinternals PageDefrag is not the only one, but I agree that PageDefrag is the only one that clearly lists the files it is defragging, and these other programs below sometimes mask what they are doing or scroll the defragged filenames past the screen without much chance to take note before the defragger moves on to the next file to defrag:

Free IOBit Smart Defrag [ http://www.iobit.com/download.html ] see [ http://www.iobit.com/iobitsmartdefrag.html ] "... Boot Time Disk Defrag Technology ... allows you to defrag files during the system boot process, while these files cannot be defragged or are not safe to move after the system is already boot[ed]-up. ..."

Free Piriform Defraggler [ http://www.piriform.com/download ] see [ http://www.piriform.com/docs/defraggler/defraggler-settings/boot-time-defrag ] "... Defraggler has a Boot-Time Defrag option which allows you to defrag files that are normally locked by the Operating System before the operating system is fully loaded ..."

Fee O&O Defrag [ http://www.oo-software.com/en/download/current ] see [ http://www.oo-software.com/en/support/faq/oodefrag ] "... boot-time defrag with O&O Defrag ... which are locked during run-time ... [ because those ] file(s) are not locked before the system starts ..."

Fee Diskeeper.com [ http://www.condusiv.com/trialware/ ] see [ http://www.condusiv.com/blog/post/2009/08/05/Determining-If-You-Need-To-Perform-a-Boot-Time-Defragmentation.aspx ] "... perform a boot-time defragmentation if the paging file or Master File Table (MFT ) becomes highly fragmented ..."

And there are 600,000+ results at a web search for [ boot time defrag ] showing many other utilities that defrag in DOS before Windows boots, including Microsof's own: http://www.ehow.com/how_6556870_do-boot-time-defragmentation.html "... HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Dfrg\BootOptimizeFunction ..."

Sadly, free Microsoft Sysinternals PageDefrag [ http://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/sysinternals ] only works fully on XP, and does not defrag some files that other defraggers above do defrag, see [ http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897426 ], "... Windows NT/2000 ... event log files and Windows 2000/XP hibernation files ..."

==========

Whew, SuperEasy.net, you dove into a bees hive here -- will we ever see a response from you about your software offering versus our comments so far?

Some brands of products do a better/more transparent job of explaining how their products work. By understanding the underlying principles/approaches/strategies used to implement the functions and features (versus marketing's hand-waving of "This Will Simply Make It Better!"), the potential user becomes more educated in comparing brands of products.

As a benefit, customer trust and brand loyalty, or "bonding", are more likely to be established if they think the developer is honest, forthright and shows that they know what they are doing.


For instance, though written by the MyDefrag folks for their product, there is some generally-useful info in this FAQ regarding SSD and Flash memory defragmentation:
http://www.mydefrag.com/FAQGeneralInformation-WillMyDefragReduceTheLifespanOfMyFlashSSDMemoryDisk.html


Notes on "Special files"; i.e., Update Sequence Number (USN) change journal file, pagefile.sys swap file, hiberfil.sys hibernation file, System Volume Information files as used by Windows Backup and System Restore, etc.):
http://www.mydefrag.com/FrequentlyAskedQuestions-FAQSpecialFiles.html


And for many other defragmentation questions likely true of any defragmenter, such as "Why does MyDefrag not perfectly optimize my disk?", see:
http://www.mydefrag.com/Manual-FrequentlyAskedQuestions.html


Finally, my suggestion is to choose and stick with one brand of defragmentation product. To follow the running of one defragmenter with a run of another will likely not further improve your system's performance a whole lot more. Initially it may seem that one product performs "faster" than the other when, in reality, depending upon the default options of each product as installed, one may have potentially better long-term performance over the other product.

Instead (assuming you are "optimizing" the arrangement of data on the drive, going beyond simple file defragmentation), due to the differing strategies/algorithms used by the various brands for rearranging the data for their individual concepts of "optimum", you will only experience the "optimization" achieved by the last one run.

However, you will certainly achieve extra disk wear (or fewer remaining write cycles in the case of Flash/SSD memory) and risk possible premature drive failure while shuffling massive amounts of bits and bytes back and forth in a "comparison tug-of-war".

(Speaking from experience, a similar thing actually happened to me. About 8 years ago, a few months after installing an anti-virus product in a then-2-year-old machine and allowing it to perform the default daily-scheduled early morning full-disk anti-virus scan, I had a failure on a drive that was not very old. It was replaced by its twin, which I had purchased at the same time as a backup, and it is still running after several more years in the same machine, but without the daily AV scan. I was able to read the S.M.A.R.T. values/parameters from the failed unit and noted that the temperature had been running overly hot, apparently during those extended scans. It had never been happening before installing the AV product when I used to monitor the drive's temperature for a long while when the computer was new, and then stopped paying attention to them.)

Anyway, with that philosophy in mind, I will stay with my current defragmentation product. I chose it (and now its differently-titled successor) a few years ago after reading many articles, including this one from 2007 (a shame there's not a newer "shootout"):

The Great Defrag Shootout, and all the defragmentation utilities I can find
http://donnedwards.openaccess.co.za/2007/06/great-defrag-shootout-all.html

The Great Defrag Shootout: The Winners
http://donnedwards.openaccess.co.za/2007/09/great-defrag-shootout-winners.html


In no way do I mean that today's offer is not good (it may be better!), but my current choice is working well for me and "...if it ain't broke, it don't need fixin'!".

Hope this helps the GAOTD users and the software title developers -- as always, thanks for the offer and this resulting discussion!

Again, this technical stuff is a challenge because we each have our misconceptions.

Earlier, jmjsquared (MY number 38) wrote,

"... Often [ hard drive contiguous free ] space is not large enough to contain the entire [ file ] “write” [ in one contiguous sequence ], therefore, a single file may wind up [ having pieces of it ] being located in many, many different physical locations (sectors) of the drive *.

When it comes time to “read” that [ file ] info in order to display the photo or play that mp3 [ or load that program or read that system cache ], the System has to spin the disk back-and-forth **, and physically move reader “heads” in-and-out hundreds or thousands of times! That means, s-l-o-w-d-o-w-n

[ of system responsiveness ].

Defragging attempts to put each file’s info into contiguous [ clusters groups of ] sectors, thereby minimizing [ hard drive access ] “seek” times and increasing performance.

It works ..."
(... above, I included some [ corrections ] in-line, my main corrections are below at * and ** ...)

Thanks, jmjsquared, that's a great revelation of the inner workings of our systems, and the need for unfragmented dole storage, however:

* -- "... physical locations (sectors) of the drive ..." could be more accurately explained as "... physical locations (CLUSTERS of sectors) of the drive ...", since all hard drive sectors are 512 bytes, and are "hidden" from the operating system, but clusters, the unit the operating system uses, are (variable count) groups of those 512-byte sectors, usually 4 drive sectors per 1 file cluster.

But drive sectors are grouped into file system clusters according to the rules of drive size and partition format, such as NTFS, or old FAT, FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/140365 and other references.

** -- "... spin the disk back-and-forth ..." can be eliminated altogether since the drives are always spinning (and spinning forward only!) all the time (except when sleeping, but that's not what we are addressing here in speeding up our computers), and your identification of "... physically move [ the ] reader [ and writer ] “heads” in-and-out ..." is all that's needed here.

Why did you use quotes on the word “heads” -- that's what they are: heads!?

For a file whose pieces are spread across, say 24 non-contiguous sectors, the heads only need to move 24+ or so times times, not hundreds or thousands, including a single directory read and a single file allocation chain read, at most 24x2 for sequential check of each next sector in the chain.

==========

Okay, why all this technical jabber, and why all this energy discussing the technical aspects of defragging, and not all the other stuff (though each of us has our own "other stuff" about which we each care intensely -- audio files, image files, and so on!)?

I care because I want the best software possible, and GODT is one avenue to talk directly to monied developers, AND the community that they are addressing.

So, I want both a savvy group of reviewers here, and a savvy group of developers showing off their stuff.

So, SuperEasy.net (Ashampoo!??), what do you think -- don't be shy, jump in and chat, PLEASE:
... how does your offering address our feedback and concerns as presented so far?

It should detect SSD and NOT defrag.

I have always advocated defragging magnetic (standard) drives on a regular basis for a number of reasons:

1. It makes accidentally deleted files more likely to be recovered. Fragmented files are harder (if not impossible) to recover. (Note that wear-leveling built-in on SSDs completely defeat recoverability.)

2. There are performance improvements, though sometimes small. It's not just boot times, but overall seek & file access times. If you are running a very busy system (>50% CPU load almost constantly) with lots of disk access, that's when you will notice the most improvement.

3. A good defragmentation often results in a "refreshed" disk drive. A property of magnetism is that the signal stregth fades with time. (Any serious admin who keeps backups on magnetic media knows to pull it; read, verify & rewrite (or clone) at regular intervals, 3-10 years depending on the media type). When you write a sector, it's at its maximum strength, so defragging will result in a refresh of all moved sectors. Plus, if there are any problems, by having read through most of the drive, the defrag will have triggered any SMART alarms that may be applicable. As drive densities increase, signal strengths decrease, so this may become more important in the future.

Where I do not advocate defragging is with SSDs or any other flash media: between built-in caching, compression, wear leveling, multi-level cell & large block buffering; the OS and any utility software does not know what optimization strategies or cell architecture the hardware vendor has implemented - so defragging may make things worse and does add to the wear and tear.

How often you defrag depends on how much writing & deleting of files you do - the more you delete, the more often you should defrag. A good rule of thumb is thorough defrag every 1-3 months for most people. You should do a quick defrag weekly, especially if you do a lot of file deletions.

I would not recommend SuperEasy Live Defrag based upon real-life experience. When using a few different "live" and screensaver defraggers, there have been issues with non-foreground applications and backup software. When the periodic app needs infrequent drive access, there has sometimes been access contention. When attempting a volume snapshot, many resulting images were seriously corrupted. At least when Windows' background defrag kicks in, the OS knows about it - almost all 3rd party defraggers do not "notify" Windows.

My recommendation for a thorough defrag has been MyDefrag / JKDefrag which has always been free. Though it is definitely not the fastest, it has been the safest & most consistent defragger that actually defrags system areas (e.g. MFT tables, bitmaps) as well as files based on usage patterns. I would declare it the safest as I witnessed a certain student pull the wrong power cord as JKdefrag was rewriting a MFT table... and the system rebooted successfully.

At boottime, SysInternal (Microsoft now) PageDefrag will defrag the pagefiles (XP & earlier), hiberfile and logfiles (all Windows versions) that no other defragger will touch.

What about this preposterous "wrapper" that Cnet.com uses. I went to install "Ultimate Defrag" and Cnet is using a wrapper too! Can't we download software anymore without these bloody wrappers? Good Heavens man!

Earlier, MY screen shows that #34 buckoooo wrote:

"... #31, Peter B ... maybe we have already tried this software before thats why i do a thumbs after a few minutes of it being offered ..."

Folks, I think the comment numbers change between screen refreshes depending on other people's new comments being added in the background at the same time that we are adding our own comments in the foreground.

We can't see that the comment numbers will change, and so my first comment now looks like it's gotten #24 assigned to it, and my second comment, marked #37 at the moment on my screen, is still awaiting moderation.

So, buckoooo, I'm not sure what specifically of mine you are referring to, and perhaps we all should quote the exact prior comment we are responding to, rather then use the variable, personally changing comment number, a number that may change and be different for each of us at different times.

Oh, I now see that there is [ Peter B ] and a different [ Peter Blaise ] (me) on this thread, so confusion may abound by numbers AND names!

Hmm ... yes, quote prior comments we are responding to, not just changeable comments #s -- thanks!

This technical stuff is a challenge because we each have our misconceptions.

#28, Chris Locke wrote,

"... Think of your hard drive as a book – each page in the book can contain parts of a file you want to store. A page can only contain 1 file though, so if a page can contain 1000 words, a file of 1001 words would take 2 pages. Pages can be reused, but not reordered ... SO IF YOU DELETE A FILE, it would delete those pages, but THEY WOULD SIMPLY BE BLANK, ready to be written in ..." [ EMPHASIS mine]

Thanks, Chris, that's an excellent analogy, but you've still got one thing still wrong: the operating system does not "blank" the old, unused page when deleting or moving a file.

It's more like changing the label on a cassette tape -- the old songs are still on the tape, they never get "blanked", and they remain in place until sometime later when they might get written over by new songs.

When deleting a file, the operating system only deletes the filename from the directory listing, and frees up the allocation units in an allocation table -- the actual old file contents remain in place (that's how they got Ollie North).

When moving a file, the operating system only moves a COPY of the old file contents, leaving the original old contents intact in the prior location on the hard drive.

Yes, the old file contents may eventually get over-written, but until then, it's still there.

The prior contents remains in any drive sector and cluster until over-written by the next file ... or until it's zero'd out by a zeroing program.

No operating system, especially Windows, would take -- read: waste, -- the time to blank an old hard drive sector or cluster when moving or deleting a file.

Note that the only way to eliminate the waste of "using two 1,000-word storage pages for a 1,001 word file" is to ZIP compress multiple files into one archive where files can concatenate immediately behind each other in the compressed archive, eliminating the wasted "slack" space you describe, which we all can do for our archives.

That's what http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stac_Electronics did with their ancient operating system enhancement, squeezing the next file immediately after the first file at the 1,002nd word position. It would be nice if Microsoft or someone would do that again.

I'm tired of compression "squeezing" only ~+10% or less savingson all my hard drive storage, still leaving me with ~0.5% slack at the enbd of each file's contents because of a mismatch with cluster size (that's 20 GB on a 2 TB drive, by the way -- a lot of unusable paid-for storage!).

But ... if we all wanna cry over our own paid-for wasted space, we can explore our own systems with Karen Kenworthy's impressive Power Tools, Disk Slack Checker http://www.softwaregeek.com/download/karen_s_disk_slack_checker.html

==========

To everyone who isn't sure why to defragment, there are manifold reasons, some performance, some insurance:

1 - defrag to make files quicker to retrieve if they are in one continuous piece compared to the additional drive latency and access time to retrieve files if they are in multiple pieces spread across the drive.

2 - defrag, moving directories and to outer ring, and sorting the file listings, to make directory listing faster (does anyone offer this, other than a DOS pre-Windows boot utility in some http://www.condusiv.com/ Diskeeper offerings and old Norton Speedisk for FAT drives?).

3 - defrag now to to reduce the future heat and energy of reading and writing fragmented file, such as defragging a portable when on AC power in order to lengthen the usable life of an upcoming battery session.

4 - defrag to make data recovery easier, because if I can find the beginning of a file, and I know the entire file is immediately in sequence after the start, then data recovery is more reliable.

5 - defrag by consolidation used and free space and then zero the unused free areas to make data recovery NOT find useless pieces left over from deleted or moved files.

6 - defrag by consolidation to facilitate resizing a drive partition.

... and so on.

Does anyone else have pointers?

==========

Note that this program offering talks about defragging in general, but offers no specifics on the types of defragging it offers.

Judging by the name, the software promises to be easy for the end user to buy and install, and the software does it's thing without a lot of miscible control interface, a non-geek tool.

Care to comment SuperEasy.net?

I use Executive Software's Diskeeper, the third-party defragmentation utility made by the same company that provided the purposely adulterated defrag utility built into Windows. I do not intend to install and experiment with today's Giveaway which, IMO, is noteworthy for, at least, two features that most defrag utilities do not have:
1.Support for RAID; and,
2.Simultaneous defragging of more than one HDD, including externals.

Permit me a few opinions:
A. Modern platter-based drives, like their predecessors, DO REQUIRE defragmenting. No Windows OS can allocate storage and location on the fly in a maximal manner. The data is put wherever on the disk the System finds space. Often that space is not large enough to contain the entire "write", therefore, a single file may wind up being located in many, many different physical locations (sectors) of the drive. When it comes time to "read" that info in order to display the photo or play that mp3, the System has to spin the disk back-and-forth, and physically move reader "heads" in-and-out hundreds or thousands of times! That means, s-l-o-w-d-o-w-n. Defragging attempts to put each file's info into contiguous sectors, thereby minimizing "seek" times and increasing performance. It works.

So, contrary to #3- IT Tech's assertions about his Magical Machine which boots in 16-seconds!!!, disk defragmentation is still necessary.

B. SSD's have no moving parts and, therefore, do not suffer performance hits caused by back-and-forth spinning and in-and-out head positioning as on HDD's. They access data more-or-less instantaneously so, although theoretically, they too would benefit from defragging, any increase in performance would be unmeasurably small and the wear-and-tear due to defragging not worth it. SSD's SHOULD NOT BE DEFRAGGED!

C. Good defrag utitlities SHOULD BE RUNNING in the background ALL THE TIME, preferably as a Service whose resource useage is throttled back when the System is actively being used,doing its job when the System is idle. They should also "selectively" defrag large files only when doing so would actually result in performance gains.

D. Whichever utility you chose, it MUST have a special defrag algorithm for volumes that have Windows Volume Shadow or System Restore enabled.

E. Notwithstanding the well-informed, humorous and generous suggestions provided by our Italian Friend, Giovanni, IMHO when it comes to defragging, paid is better than free.

I have found Auslogics to be the best defrag for my needs (GOTD and Giovanni). After reading the thirty comments so far, I don't think its necessary to even try out this software.

I'm no tech guru, so I cannot provide an in depth analysis of different defrag (or any other type of) programs, however I can say that I prefer a program the gives me control over its activities on my machine; that control is one of the main criteria of whether I consider the software useful. Others include results produced, ease of use, etc.

As I said, I'm no IT expert, which is why I constantly monitor this site. I enjoy reading the comments and thus learning more about a particular type of software; Giovanni and others provide useful suggestions. The thumbs up and down votes are also useful, if used in conjunction with the comments, otherwise they provide very little help. Why a software salesperson (Joe,commenter #4) would blame a thumbs down vote on the voter is beyond me; perhaps if Joe had waited for more comments to be posted, he would know why the thumbs down votes were given.

I assume there is a wide range of readers who participate in this site, some with more and some with less knowledge/computer experience than me; some looking for the same and some looking for different software as me. I would hope that any software developer, or salesperson Joe, would use this site to improve their software, whether they have posted it here or not. By reading the reviews and questions posted, they should get a better idea of what is desirable or undesirable in that particular type of software.

This is why I visit this site: yes, for the occasional free software I might use, and then purchase, but more importantly, it provides a forum for me to learn what alternatives are out there. Sometimes, the software that is given away seems to be a top choice, sometimes not. In any case, I learn, as should any developer. Anyone who gets ticked off because Giovanni and others post alternatives, or because a software is voted down, misses the whole point.

I don't usually comment on this site, though I read it every day.

But I will take this time to thank:
1. GOTD for providing this unique, quality forum
2. software developers for posting their software
3. Giovanni and others for letting me know of alternatives to the featured software
4. those who take the time to post their constructive comments (positive or negative).

I have learned much from this site, and my computers more productive as a result.

I will get down off the soapbox now.

@#31 You really didn't miss anything. I tried it and while it works and gives pretty pictures I went with one of the suggestions in the comment section (the best part of this website) and use MyDefrag which is free at the moment. It uses a completely different algorithm to do the defragmentation. It is not fast and it's pictures aren't pretty but there is a measurable improvement in speed after defragging a disk that hasn't been done in some months.

#31 Peter B
maybe we have already tried this software before
thats why i do a thumbs after a few minutes of it being ofered

Auslogics Disc Defrag is the Roll Royce of disc defrags .Unfortunately I missed their paid version when it was given away but their free version is the best of all the ones I have tried.

I would be interested if someone could compare super easy to it to it as I dont need another defrag prog ; I have not downloaded it yet.

As far as the voting is concerned , just like you get trolls on blogs, on giveaway sites you get kids ? or are they adults ? who think it is fun to vote all one way, without ever downloading or trying out the software. That is why there are so many votes even though the software has only just been offered, so it is always best to read the comments and not be swayed by the votes.

#4 JOE JOE JOE oh JOE
perhaps i gave it thumbs because i have already tested this before, like many other,

as a defrag goes its ok, if your PC is new or working fine you don't need this, if your PC is old and slow download and use this software but you will not find a lot of difference in your PC performance

Since no one else has said it, I will. #3, yours is an ignorant comment and, yes, NTFS performance can be substantially improved by rearranging file order on the disk. Try it, you'll see.

As for this, I used to be pretty happy with Puran's free alternative and, but for the Auslogics GAOTD here recently, I would still be using it. In any event, I'm not in the market for something new

While everyone seems to be comparing free to not free and best vs worst I as a Certified Computer Tech and Microsft certified professional will comment that I (and many of my co-workers) and microsoft agree with comment #3. the NTFS file system while being a serious pain in the ass is pretty much self reliant. to the point where cluster sizes are smaller therefor much less waste when software and data are saved to the HDD and the built in error correction is better than anything microsoft has produced in years. But with that said Defraging a hard drive is still necessary just not as often and should not be left running in the background as this program states that it does mainly because windows is notoiarious for its crappy memory management problems ie it does not like to give back memory even when its no longer needed. the nature of programs like this is that it needs to allocate ram to do its job and when its done and in monitoring mode windows will NOT give up the ram thereby causing potential conflicts when other programs need that ram (more often than not resulting in the BSOD) for those of you that dont know what that is consider yourself lucky. I reccommend Defrag your drives at least once every couple of months or more often as was stated earlier if you are frequently installing or un-installing software although thats more of a Registery problem than a defrag problem. Just my humble opinioun.

IT Tech (comment #3) is partially right. Defrag tools were necessary a decade ago when access times on hard drives were quite slow. Hard drives nowadays can find a file so quick, performing a defrag would give very little improvement.
But first a quick lesson is whats happening. Think of your hard drive as a book - each page in the book can contain parts of a file you want to store. A page can only contain 1 file though, so if a page can contain 1000 words, a file of 1001 words would take 2 pages. Pages can be reused, but not reordered, so if you deleted a file, it would delete those pages, but they would simply be blank, ready to be written in. Delete 50 files, and you'd have gaps in the book - blank pages amongst pages written in.
There are (as far as PCs are concerned) two methods of writing to these 'books' - FAT and NTFS. With FAT, when you saved a file, it used to start at the beginning of the disk and found a blank page and started to write the file. After 1000 words (figures for illustrative purposes only) it would find another blank page - this could be 40 or 50 pages later in the book. It noted on the previous page where the next page was. This continued until the file was written.
Reading from page 40 to 41 wasn't bad, but there was a delay in reading from page 40 to page 120, and then to page 185, then to page 400. The head of the drive didn't have to move much if it only had to read 4 adjacent pages.
NTFS was a bit more sensible in that it knew how many pages it would need, so found a gap in the book that number of pages. If that wasn't possible, it would find the biggest gap possible, then the next biggest, etc, so reducing the number of gaps. Sometimes though, the system doesn't know how big a file is (eg, writing to a log file) so fragmentation is still possible, even with NTFS.
Defragging is all about 'rewriting' the book, pulling data from non-adjacent pages into gaps created by deleting files, etc.

In conclusion, third party programs for this are always better than the 'standard' tools you get with the operating system, but a lot contain more bells and whistles than you actually need. I won't list alternatives here as Giovanni has already provided an excellent list, but in all honesty, you don't really need any of them. Running a defrag regularly can actually put more strain on your hard drive, and considering it will grind away for 3 to 6 hours, and only give you milliseconds worth of improvement, it is not 'economical' use of resources.

'automatically ensures that no more fragmentation occurs..' - I'm not a tech-head, but not sure I can believe this claim?

#21 The Major - How can anybody tell, who is a wannabe and who is not, if you really don´t know much about PCs, hardware and software ?

(Just for the record: I started on the ZX81 and have had many home computers including PCs since 1982, BUT I am not an expert for that reason !!! I have custom build a lot of PCs over the past 15 years, BUT I am still not an expert !!!)

Am I a wannabe ? I do not think so...

A defragger will never actually achieve defragmenting an SSD drive. After it is done running the SSD will eventually move all the files again because it uses a process called 'wear leveling'.
Wear leveling makes sure all NAND cells get equal usage. Your files do not "sit" in one location after install as they do on an HDD or spinning drive.

My advice would be to let the SSD write files where it wants and do its job of wear leveling and clean itself up the way it was designed to by the SSD firmware.

So is this bedder than Windows De-Frag? Would this stop the blue screans? Thank !!!

Perhaps Ashampoo can explain their multi-tier marketing so we can understand:

Unicode Name: supereasy.net
Owner Contact: Ashampoo GmbH & Co. KG, Felix-Wankel-Str. 16, Oldenburg, 26125, DE

So, to compare:

https://www.supereasy.net/en/usd/pca/1/products

-- where Live Defrag = $20 7 day trial

versus

https://www.ashampoo.com/en/usd/fdl

-- showing Magical Defrag v2 = $10 and v3 = $15, both with 30-40 day trials.

My review? For more money, we get less control, perhaps their intended market audience wants a "just turn it on for me" product, not something with a lot of user interaction?

I'm not sure if EastNet Live Defrag promises to automatically cause new files to be saved unfragmented from the get go, then to consolidate free space when the system is idle, that would be the only ongoing thing I would value, after initial defrag.

Let's look at the feature list for SuperEasy Live Defrag:

https://www.supereasy.net/en/usd/pin/0014/products/SuperEasy-Live-Defrag

-- Functions at a glance
-- Fully automatic background monitoring
-- Real-time hard disk analysis
-- Easy and uncomplicated operation
-- Weekly statistics
-- Expanded options for advanced users
-- Energy check for notebooks
-- SSD-hard disk protection
-- Timer for defragmentation tasks
-- Intelligent, resource-saving algorithm
-- Simultaneous defragmentation of several hard disks
-- Support for external USB hard disks
-- Full RAID hard disk support

The only real-time thing is analysys?

So, what's "live" about Live Defrag?

Versus what, "dead" defrag, like when we defrag in DOS before Windows boot?

Or do they mean "backgrouhd" defrag ... which every defrag product does already, a feature of the multithread Windows operating system from the first Windows ever.

Most important to me is that boot defrag to defrag otherwise open Windows files, and then moving and sorting directories to the outer ring to insure fastest directory access and display -- does SuperEasy Live Defrag do that?

So, SuperEasy.net, er, Ashampoo, can you add some responses here? That would help us understand your intentions and the program's features and benefits.

NEVER DEFRAG AN SSD!! All you will achieve is a premature failure of the unit. No gain at all.

[code]10.NOTE; All I’ve read indicates Solid State Drives (SSD) should NOT be defragmented – to do so will shorten it’s working life.

P.S. Thankyou Bubby, Fubar, Mike and all other constructive commentors. I too have learnt a great deal on this site.[/code]

Nothing wrong with de-fragmenting ssd and ssd hybrid drives.

I suggest 'J' you go read up deeper on the subject rather than listening to the writing of wannabee's.

Hello,
Win 7 64 bit pro, download and installation fine.
Just running it now on my main 1.5 TG HD, running several other programs and no noticeable difference in performance at all. Also, I like the interface, it's intuitive, clean and compact.
I have to say that I do not install many GAOTD offers and comment on even less but this one caught my eye, so after reading Mr Giovanni's excellent (as usual) report I decided to give it a go. The bit about moving often accessed data to the fasted parts of the HD is something I'd never realised before, so thank you for that insight Mr G.
Kind regards, Andy

Requires allowing Ashampoo to view the web page ?? Did Ashampoo just buy it ?? 48,800 mentions on google and no reviews ??
CNET - version 1.0 , 70 downloads since April 05, 2012 ?? 1 (ONE) download last week ?? CNET review by software publisher ?? 5 star rating from 1 (ONE) user ?? Creepy , not for me !!

Piriform Defraggler is one of the best.

Also, Ashampoo's Winoptimiser 9 defrags in background.

Use either to defrag system files on startup.

Result: I seldom have to run the Defraggler program, and if I do, it only takes seconds.

Drives do not need defragged? If you say so but I'll continue with above as it works. Strange why Windows Vista and 7 have defrag programs if they are not required. Defraggler is set up to replace the Vista system I have.

SSD drives should never be defragged however.

I see it says "SSD-hard disk protection." So doesthat mean it ignores SSDs? As far as I'm aware defragging is not only uneccessary for an SSD but would damage it or reduce it's working volume. Or am I wrong?

I've recently installed a 120gb SSD as C:// for OS and programs, with data going to second drive or external, most of which is permanent storage. I don't now have tha writing / deletion / overwriting that I once had, and consequently my thinking is that defragging will be needed much less, and less frequently, than in past years when I was over-writing far more. Or, again, am I wrong?

I'll pass on today's Giveaway - I have an aversion to programs that sit unobtrusively and continuously working away in the background, and a greater aversion to those that are auto. I'd much prefer full manual control.

Works fine for me. Thank you GOAD!

11.The best, lightest and quicker is… JKdefrag.
You can use JKdefragGUI as interface.

Pass.
I don't need this.

Will continue to use freeware Auslogic portable Defrag with its excellent user interface and defrag results. It tells you after analysis that defrag is not yet necessary in some cases (i.e. fragmentation is below 5%). It never tries to be too smart and start defragging various drives without your command.

This will be hard for a lot of people to accept here. I understand this is a crowded field. I know there are a lot of alternatives, many of them free. But that does not mean that this type of program can not be made again. Maybe it has been improved and will function better. It is like saying we might as well not produce any more new cars because there are already plenty of cars on the road. Technology advances so there is always room for someone that can take a program and design it better. That being said, I am not saying this is better or worse that the programs that are currently available. All I am saying is to approach it with an open mind and give it a fair chance.

NOTE; All I've read indicates Solid State Drives (SSD) should NOT be defragmented - to do so will shorten it's working life.

P.S. Thankyou Bubby, Fubar, Mike and all other constructive commentors. I too have learnt a great deal on this site.