I do maintenance on my computer weekly to keep it clean and organized so it will run at top performance. Part of maintaining an organized system includes defragging your hard drive. Here’s my favorite free utility for the job. It’s Defraggler.
Defraggler, from Piriform (Yes, the same company that makes another one of my favorite apps — CCLeaner for Windows and MAC), provides more features than Windows’ built-in Disk Defragmenter. That includes scheduled defragging and the capability to defrag individual files and directories.
When installing Defraggler, be sure to accept its offer to replace Windows Disk Defragmenter.
![sshot-2011-10-28-[00-23-58]](https://www.groovypost.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/sshot-2011-10-28-00-23-58.png "sshot-2011-10-28-[00-23-58]")
After you install Defraggler, click Analyze. This checks your hard drive for fragmented files — in other words, over time files end up with data scattered across sectors and not in contiguous order. That means slower disk performance for retrieving what you need. Defraggler also provides you a nice graphical report.
![sshot-2011-10-28-[00-26-34]](https://www.groovypost.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/sshot-2011-10-28-00-26-34.png "sshot-2011-10-28-[00-26-34]")
Click the Defrag button once the analysis is completed to start the process.
![sshot-2011-10-28-[00-34-04]](https://www.groovypost.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/sshot-2011-10-28-00-34-04.png "sshot-2011-10-28-[00-34-04]")
Don’t be surprised if the first defrag takes several hours. In my example, I had over 400 Gigabytes of drive space that needed to be defragged and it took about 3 hours the first time I ran it.
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ole
Looks good but unlike other programs such as Auslogic it does not offer optimization in the free version. Optimization takes longer but is worthwhile on a weekly or monthly basis depending on computer usage.
Cat McGowan
Dangerous! I once pressed the Stop button because I needed to shutdown my computer and Defraggler left my hard drive in an unusable state. I have not yet been able to recover the files from my hard drive.
Steve Krause
OUCH Cat – Good info to know. That is not cool. Did this just happen recently?
Cat McGowan
No, not recently. About two years ago. I have not used Piriform’s Defraggler since the incidence. I do, however, use Piriform’s CCleaner on a regular bases.
Steve Krause
Well I can’t blame you for not using it again. Thanks for the warning however. I’m actually using it right now as we speak. If I have an issue…. Will issue a more public warning. Um… I mean groovyPost. :)
churito
Hello Steve:
I didn’t try Piriform’s Defraggler since I use Puran Defrag and fullfils all my expectations. Maybe you want to take a look to it and give us a comparative. By me I’m going to try Piriform’s Defraggler because I like and use other free products from them. Thanks for your posts all are very interesting. Greets.