Auslogics Defrag Adds Features, Windows 7 Improvements

The newest revision of Auslogics Disk Defragmentation utility is gaining functionality that once was the domain of paid programs. Where it once only defragmented files, it now defragments files, consolidates space, and will move system files to the beginning of the drive – essentially most of what Diskeeper revision 6 did a few years back.

For most people, this is more than enough, as some are so oblivious to what defragmentation is, and does for them, that it makes little difference anyway. Those that do understand, and want to save some money, are certainly going to welcome this latest revision.

gHacks takes a look at the progress of this program -

Auslogics Disk Defrag is a hard disk defragmentation software for the Windows operating system. Recently version 3 of the software program has been released; Reason enough for us to take a look at the improvements in this new version. At its core stands the option to defragment all connected hard drives of the computer system.

The hard drives can be analyzed before the defragmentation to ensure that it is necessary to start the process at all. Hard drives can be unselected which is helpful in several cases including connected solid state drives or encrypted partitions that are not mounted.

The analysis will display the total number of files and the number of fragmented files on the PC system. Auslogics Disk Defrag can then defragment the selected hard drives. A new feature is the option to optimize the fragmentation by consolidating free space by placing all files on the disk contiguously.

The top menu contains several additional options, namely the option to defragment a file or folder and to change the process priority of the defragmentation.

The defragmentation can be paused and resumed anytime. One interesting option is the defragmented file view which makes it possible to take a look at all defragmented files of the selected hard drive. Most changes have been made to the core including performance improvements to the defragmentation process, better tie-ins with the Windows Task Scheduler or better processing of files that are locked by the computer system.

Auslogics Disk Defrag is available as an installer or portable version. It can be downloaded from the developer’s website where it is available for all Microsoft operating systems that have been released since Windows XP including Windows 7 and Windows Vista. Interested users can take a closer look at the release notes to read about all of the changes that have been added to the disk defragmentation software.

and then, from the horse’s mouth -

What’s new in Disk Defrag 3?

Auslogics Disk Defrag is not just a defragmenter any more, but a fully featured disk optimizer. And with all the advanced techniques of disk optimization it has, Disk Defrag 3 remains extremely compact and even easier to use!
Free space consolidation

Free space on a disk is often split into many small gaps between files. Windows fills these gaps with newly created or extended files. The more fragmented the free space is, the more fragmented new files will be. Disk Defrag merges free space into a large contiguous block. This technology dramatically slows further files fragmentation and speeds up disk access.

System files smart placement

Commonly used by Windows, system files may be scattered all over the disk and intermixed with data files. Disk Defrag 3 arranges system files by defragmenting and moving them to the faster part of the disk. This minimizes the time needed for HDD to access system files improving overall computer performance.
Keeping the MFT Reserved Zone Clear

Normally, NTFS file system reserves about 12.5% of the disk volume for the MFT records (a place where information about every file and directory is stored). However, when the rest of the disk space is getting low, the MFT Reserved Zone will be used for storing regular files. This may lead to MFT fragmentation.

Disk Defrag 3 replaces regular files from the MFT Reserved Zone into the rest of the disk space, allowing NTFS to allocate contiguous space for the MFT records and thus to prevent its fragmentation.

Enhanced user interface

A redesigned user interface makes navigation through Disk Defrag 3 more intuitive than ever before. It can be integrated into the Windows Explorer context menu and minimized to system tray on close. Use its many new customization settings to simplify defragmentation process.

List of fragmented files

Disk Defrag 3 lists all the fragmented files after performing disk analysis. Selecting any file from the list will highlight its clusters location on a fragmentation map. You can find the most fragmented files and their paths by sorting the list. Right-click on any file directly in the list to defragment it.

A small thing, which I find really nice, because the authors of this program paid attention to what can be done with the UI of Windows 7, is that the program can be minimized to the Windows 7 taskbar, with the progress of the defrag shown as a growing bar on the icon. It’s not a deal breaker if a program doesn’t have it, but it shows that these people care about details.

The updates keep coming, and features are being added about every couple of months – this is amazing for a free program.

It works well on Windows XP and Vista also. Highly recommended.

Download here.

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