As programs are installed and uninstalled and files are deleted, remnants of the files are left behind and sectors of the hard drive become fragmented. Uninstalling programs does not completely get rid of them, fragments of the files and folders remain behind, occupying hard disk space, rendering it unusable for storage. Defragmentation tools are included in the Windows package and it is a decent application, but many users discover that there are third party defragmentation applications which seem to do a better job than Windows Defrag. Among those, some perform better than others. IObit’s Smart Defrag is one that is ahead of the game. It features highly efficient and fast defragmentation ability. Some applications take hours to complete and entirely too much fragmented space is left behind. Smart Defrag does the job quickly with far greater accuracy than the typical application.
Defragmentation works by moving fragmented files into one continuous block, thus freeing up available physical memory. Smart Defrag is a freeware application by IObit, and software from IObit is impressive in general. Smart defrag analyzes a hard disk much more rapidly than you would expect and defragmentation completes quickly. The interface is a sleek and friendly, offering Auto Defragmentation to top things off.
Since fragmentation is occurring constantly, it is important to defragment your computer’s hard drive(s) on a regular basis. The interface is easy to use and the application will defrag your files system while your computer is idle and maintain optimal disk performance at all times.
On a PC that has never been defragmented, a significant amount of memory is unnecessarily occupied by fragmented files and this can slow down performance while blocking hard drive sectors from being usable. In this case, you will see a significant amount of fragmented blocks colored in red on the interface during analysis and the process will take longer to complete, but it is well worth the wait. A large amount of physical memory can be restored. For those of us who run a good defragmentation application regularly, there is little fragmentation at all and is much easier to sort out.
The Auto Defragmentation is a set it and forget it feature so you don’t have to be concerned anymore about cumulative fragmentation. Smart defrag does not run constantly in the background, as this would damage the hard drive over time. Instead, it has a “Safe Intelligence that decides when and how to start defragmentation. This feature also has an interesting interface that shows you the results of continued performance over time. The percentage of fragmented space is indication as well and there is a CPU meter built in.
Upon completion of defragmentation, Smart Defrag clearly .displays the amount of fragmented space before and after the operation is completed while indicating the number of defragmented files and directories. It does a better job than most other similar applications and this is apparent from the first use.
You can set Boot time defragmentation in addition to the Automatic feature. For the average user, this is usually not as essential as it is for those geeks among us who just have to install software and test it out and often we end up uninstalling it anyway. This leaves quite a mess and Smart Defrag is ideal for you to try out if you are frequently making changes to programs. It is designed for modern, large hard drives and, as a result, eliminates long waiting times without occupying too excessive resources and none of your files are ever harmed.
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This article doesn’t past muster at all!
What exactly do program remnant files have to do with defrag?
Does this fragmentation happen on all computer systems, as supposed in the opening paragraph? Not hardly, though it is a CONTINUING problem for the file-system that Micro$oft has used over the last couple of decades, that of NTFS, AND which is not a problem for other PC systems using different file-system, say on MacOS or Linux or Unix!
There was also, curiously, no mention as to what a “defrag” program actually does, or a comparison with other like utilities and how this one compares.
This was useless article!
Hum ever since Smart Defrag was released in PortableApps I wonder how does it compare to the rest, such as Defraggler or JKDefrag. From my personal experience Defraggler is incredible slow (even when using quick defrag mode), and as far as I can tell I have hear good comments in forums about Smart Defrag. Another reason I have had this app in standbay, was the company use of malware-bytes databse in his antivirus soft, but as I said before so far I have heard only good comments about this app.
Question, have you considered Melanie, Martin or Mike doing some comparative test articles?
Comparative tests would be difficulty to do. You’d had to create a full image of a hard drive and use it to run the tests. I personally do think that it would make sense to compare the performance and effectiveness of defragmentation software, but that it probably goes beyond what I can do in a reasonable time frame.
Fair enough ;)
For a comparison of free defragmenters (and some explanation what (de)fragmentation is): http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-disk-de-fragmenter.htm
In on of the comments I read: As per our site policy, IObit will not be featured until they have a green WOT rating.
@ Peter,
I remember techsupportalert from the days when they were 46 best free utilities. Since then they have matured as a very informative web site and yes, they have quite good collection. However, I must tell you that since the original best free defrag post, the mods have changed. IMHO any mod that puts AusLogic Disk Defrag in front of MyDefrag/JkDefrag, mate, he’ll probably need to go and do something else, like grow vegies or swim with dolphins, whatever …
SmartDefrag has changed quite a bit and it is a solid application. Most of the defragmenters use windows API and (maybe) VSS compatible defragmentation. Defraggler, even that does not have any optimization yet, it is VERY good at what it does, defragmenting, but that is all. PuranDefrag Free is (IMO) the most that you will get out of free defragmenter. It does very good job. If I was to choose between IoBit and Puran, Puran for my PC, SmartDefrag on customers PC’s.
At one stage, techsupportalert started deleting posts from people that really know what they are talking about, but contradicts with a mod’s opinion and then, they’ve lost my vote.
Here’s a link that explains quite a bit about defragmenting.
http://donnedwards.openaccess.co.za/2008/12/boot-time-defragmentation.html
http://www.openaccess.co.za/BlackAndWhiteInc/Defrag.htm
In regards to the WOT rating, mate, that was ages ago and holding onto one thing like a blind man on a stick, is quite boring. Please note that I am not affiliated with any of the software makers mentioned in this post.
Cheers
Now I remember why I switched to Linux. No defragging. Well, one of many reasons. No rebooting. No anti-virus. No slowing down of the computer. No registry to edit, speedup and fix. No patch Tuesday. Ahhh. Let me count the ways. :)
I remember why I switched back from Linux: no drivers for my printer, could not get the screen resolution right,ton of apps I couldn’t use.
I like XP.
The various linux filesystems can and DO become fragmented over time, but because of the way the modern linux filesystems layout the data they’re just far more resistant.
Take a heavily used (and almost certainly fragmented) linux filesystem and backup all of the data. Erase the drive and repartition it exactly how you had it before and then restore your data once more. You’ll notice a dramatic increase in speed.
In fact, both btrfs and ext4 have online defrag tools which make the above old way of degfragging a linux filesystem obsolete.
I recently tried Smart Defrag on one of my many back-up drives containing (amongst other things) approx. 103 gigs-worth of music and promptly “lost” several thousand music tracks. They couldn’t be seen but I deduced they were still there, judging by the used space on the drive. It took a run with CHKDSK to bring them back into view, so can I assume the file system was partially hosed?
My first assumption would be that you had preexisting file system errors and that the defrag just sped up problems that would have happened anyways. I’ve found its generally a good idea just to double check that your filesystem is indeed clean before a thorough defrag.
I installed and ran Smart Defrag 2 today. When it finished, I ran Perfect Disk 10 right behind it. According to Perfect Disk, SD2 left a huge number of files fragmented on the drive. Apparently, Raxco and IObit have different ideas of what constitutes a fragmented file. I’m going to stick with Perfect Disk for now. I might try PuranDefrag after I make an image of the drive.
Hi,
I think there is one interesting point to mention about SD2 : it has a nice optimization strategy : all folder entries (NTFS only) are moved to the fastest area (start of HDD/Partition) and re-defrag is ususally extremely quick. The exclusion features, based on size or location is also useful.
One bad point though : V2 install the driver that runs all the time.
I have a suspicion that it may have been the so-called optimisation feature that partly hosed the file system when I tried it on one of my external drives. I will continue to use Auslogics. That also has an “optimisation” feature but, so far, I have never had any problem using that program.