Defrag This!

Although I think it’s painfully clear that most blogs are just another avenue for blowhards to hear (read: read) themselves talk, I’m here to tell you: Not me man, uh uh, I’ve got something to say! Sure I do. Alright, how about something useful (I think that’s what blogs were intended for)… I stumbled into a problem with a little used (now anyway) Pentium iii PC I found collecting dust at home. You see, my drive (a giant 16 gigs) was approximately HALF fragmented. Oh yeah, additionally, it only had about 1 % of free space available, rendering it un-defragable! After deleting everything I didn’t need, I tried running MS De-frag, and came up no better off. I know what you’re thinking. Why the heck would I even bother to use the MS De-frag? I figured it was a good base line to compare anything else I would end up trying (apparently the base line was a flat line). Anyway, the next step was Piriform’s free Defraggler. I must say, Defragler is an amazing product considering its price. Defraggler typically finds 30% more fragmented files and potential disc space than the MS-DF. Unfortunately, Defraggler wasn’t able to defrag much of anything either. Ok, so this blog is useful and self serving. Next step: DialAGeek’s PC Assurance. I downloaded our residential optimization package and the results were remarkable. After a few minutes of analyzing, I was given a message that said that PC Assurance needed to re-start my computer. While re-booting, I was shown a message that a “boot” defrag was in progress. After about 10 minutes, I was fully logged in and decided to re-analyze with Defraggler. There were still a number of files that were a problem, but the amount of disc space that was fragmented was down from 8 gig to less than a gig (BTW, Defraggler wasn’t able to repair any more files either; I’m guessing physical damage). Someone needs to do some ‘splainin’ here, I thought. What is it we do that is so different than the other guys? I went straight to the head Geek, who berated me and my status as a Geek. “Dude, I lamely retorted, I know what PC Assurance is and what it can do, but HOW does it do it so much better than your typical de-frager?” It turns out there’s more than one way to de-frag. The goal of defragmenting a drive is to create as much open disc space as possible. Some programs reconnect fragments of files well enough but do not compact them like a trash-compacter so that the open space is maximized. It’s something like trying to clear a page as one whole as opposed to sixteen. Clear out all of the segments and make ‘em whole. How’s that for ‘splainin’? It turns out that the air is significantly cooler when the words have actual value.