So I got the Diskeeper (15?) Trial about a month ago and started using it. Eventually I just used my good judgement and gut feeling to decide that "this time", I'd like to still use a defragger for this machine. But a good decision could be made by going either way, and in the future, maybe I won't need a defragger either! However, I do still maintain several spinning hard drive partitions (currently only on one physical HDD), and some of them still get updated on a semi-frequent basis. Personally, I am on the cusp at this time due to the sheer amount of data that I have. The overhanging question in all this is of course, "do we still need to defrag?" It's a valid question, especially in today's increasingly ubiquitous SSD climate, where defragging is neither needed nor a good practice. But I liked it because it allowed me to get my geek fix, and then Diskeeper removed it. Mostly, that display wasn't necessary, and I'll acknowledge that. Also, Diskeeper long ago removed the disk mapping graphics, which show the clusters on a given partition as individual cells, and in even older versions, you could "walk the map" and see the layout of individual files and how they might contribute to fragmentation. The latest UI design left me a bit confused and I longed for the older interface because I knew where everything was. My biggest issue with Diskeeper is graphical. First off, let me be clear: Diskeeper is still a fine product and I had no technical problems or corruptions, or anything like that. As soon as the user clicks the mouse or presses a key, the defragging is suspended.Well, here it is: The last several versions of Diskeeper have left me a little bit disappointed. Diskeeper can be set up to defrag the disk whenever the machine is idle. This Diskeeper example shows the fragmented files (in red) before defragging and the results below. In addition, should the hard disk ever crash and you did not back up important files, data recovery experts will tell you that a defragged disk is much easier to restore. Nevertheless, defragmenting disks regularly is good practice because it reduces wear and tear on the drive mechanism. Because today's computers are so fast, users may not notice any increase in speed with routine applications such as word processing and spreadsheets, especially if the files are small. After defragmenting, performance increases are most noticeable on very large databases that had been heavily fragmented. Some users are fanatical about defragging their disks on a regular basis. Other popular defraggers, such as Diskeeper, offer enhanced capabilities. Windows comes with the DEFRAG.EXE utility, which can be activated by the Run dialog from the Start menu. A "defragger" or "optimizer program" rewrites all the files and stores them in adjacent sectors. Large files may be broken into thousands of fragments, causing the read/write head to move back and forth numerous extra times to read the data.
Because the operating system stores new data in whatever free space is available, data files become spread out across the disk as they are updated. defragmentTo reorganize the disk by putting files into contiguous order. McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, 6E, Copyright © 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.