More Freeware Defragging Tools

Back in April, I posted Defrag Mosaic in which I pondered the value of running file system defragment utilities on a XP/2000 system.

Robert Moir touched on this in his well-written post Defrag (pt 1) You can't measure it. 

This was later followed by a more detailed examination about methods to compare defragmentation tools' effectiveness: Defrag (pt2) You can compare products - but not easily.

If you haven't already read these, I encourage you to take to time to read what Robert has to say.

In my earlier post I mentioned eight file defraggers and one registry defragger.

Thin List - Free File System Defraggers

Since that post I've been using the following ones, generally depending on which pretty block-patterns I want to look at, more than any real technical evaluations:

• Auslogics Disk Defrag - (freeware) - Great and portable disk defragger.
• JkDefrag v3.30 - (freeware) - Powerful and multi-optioned disk defragger.
• Contig paired with Power Defragmenter GUI - (freeware) - 1 Sysinternals CLI defragger tool + a GUI interface = awesome goodness.

Free Registry Defraggers

For registry defragging I've been successfully using these:

• Auslogics Registry Defrag - (freeware) - Great and portable registry defragger.
• PageDefrag v2.32 (Sysinternals) - (freeware) Sysinternals tool for registry and pagefile defragging.
• Free Registry Defrag - (freeware) - simple tool.
• NTREGOPT - (freeware) - great and dependable tool for quickly defragging the registry hives.

New Freeware File Defrag Tool

Defraggler - (freeware) - This is a new one from the crew at CCleaner.  It is similar to Contig in that it defrags a single file or files, one at a time.  The GUI interface is very well done.  It is easy to understand and select the target files to be defragged.  I really like using this tool to focus on my ISO files and other image-related files that can get really big and fragmented (.gho/.ghs/.wim/.pst).  Saves a bunch of time, especially before I start burning them to a CD/DVD.  I think it saves a bunch of time (well, ok, seconds).  I definately recommend checking this bad-boy out.  Bonus: Install the application and copy the exe from the Program Files folder to a USB drive and you are good to go portable!

Adding GUI to JkDefrag

JkDefrag v3.30 is as mentioned, a powerful and flexible defragging tool and optimizer for Windows 2000/2003/XP/Vista/X64.  Basically, you just run the file and it goes.  If you want more options, you really need to run it with command-line options.

To add flexibility for non-CLI folks, I've been recommending the JkDefragGUI wrapper for it by Emiel Wiedraaijer.  It is a simple multi-tabbed interface that really helps get at the power of JkDefrag. Download this program and launch.  It will automatically download JkDefrag and set it up in the JkDefragGUI folder you launched it from.  If it doesn't get the most recent version, you can download JkDefrag v3.30, unpack it, and manually copy it over the older version files in JkDefragGUI.

However, the other day I was looking for JkDefragGUI and stumbled across two other GUI versions that have sightly different approaches to the interface.

Pick any of these according to your visual preferences:

JkDefragGUI - The original GUI wrapper (to me) from Emiel Wiedraaijer.

JkDefragGUI + JkDefrag de - Markus Hörl's done a great job of making a colorful and tiny GUI wrapper.

JGDefragGUI - Dirk Paehl's GUI tool.  Very tiny and just a few critical options to pick from. If you like it really tiny and simple, this may be what you are looking for.

Lots of great tools here.  Find one or take them all.  All should be compatible with Windows 2000/XP/Vista.

Keep your system clean and orderly!

--Claus