Make your Harddisk Always Cruise At Top Speed

We all face the problem with computers getting slower and slower as and when we start dumping and trashing files out of the hard disks, choking it to struggle harder and harder seeking and writing files in and out of it. We knew the troubles of using the default disk defragment tool gifted by Microsoft Disk Defragment Tool – “Defrag.exe”. Don’t worry – there exists a far superior free / OpenSource tool to help you out in keeping your drive optimised smartly and help it cruise at the maximum RPM it can handle.

Free (released under the GNU General Public License) disk defragment and optimize utility for Windows 2000/2003/XP/Vista/X64. Completely automatic and very easy to use, fast, low overhead, with several optimization strategies, and can handle floppies and USB disks/sticks. Included are a Windows version, a commandline version
(for scheduling by the task scheduler or for use from administrator scripts), a screensaver version, a DLL library (for use from programming languages), and versions for Windows X64.

You can get more info here >> JK Defrag Home Page.

Download JkDefrag v3.29 (412kb) for Windows 2000/2003/XP/Vista

Download JkDefrag64 v3.29 (400kb) for X64 versions of Windows 2003/XP/Vista

How it works

JkDefrag is based on the standard Defragmentation Interface by Microsoft (the FSCTL_GET_VOLUME_BITMAP,
FSCTL_GET_RETRIEVAL_POINTERS, and FSCTL_MOVE_FILE function calls), just like all other defragmenters.
It is therefore very solid, there is no risk of losing data or the disk getting scrambled, and you can run it while the computer is in full use.
Phase 1: Analyze

JkDefrag has to scan all the files on the disk to determine if they are fragmented and where they are.

Phase 2: Defragment

All fragmented files are defragmented, simply by moving them to the first gap on the disk that is big enough. If there is no gap big enough then the defragmenter will reduce the number of fragments in the file by moving as much of the file as possible into the largest gaps available.

Phase 3: Optimize

• end, sometimes by as much as 200 percent! See the link to “HD Tune” in the “See Also” chapter for a nice little free program to measure your disk. The default JkDefrag optimization strategy therefore moves all files to the
  beginning of the volume. It is intended for daily use and will simply fill gaps with files from above, very quick and with very little data movement.
• JkDefrag classifies files into 3 zones: directories (zone 1), regular files (zone 2), and space hogs (zone 3).
  Directories are perhaps the most accessed data on disk, so zone 1 is placed at the beginning of the harddisk. After the directories comes a free area (see below), then zone 2 with regular files, another free area,
  and then zone 3 with space hogs (less important files that take up a lot of space). The begin and end of the zones is determined automatically, see the “-f” option.
• A running computer will create and delete temporary files like there is no tomorrow. If the harddisk were completely optimized then the only place for new temporary files would be behind all the other data. Which is rather slow. So JkDefrag maintains a free space of 1% of the total disk space between zone 1 (directories) and zone 2 (regular files), and between zone 2 and zone 3 (space hogs).
• Sorting the files on your disk can give you even more speed. There are several sorting strategies to choose from (see the “-a” options). These are all very slow and intended for occasional use only.
• Windows reserves a percentage of the disk for the MFT (Master File Table), but can place normal files there if the rest of the disk is full. The files will remain there, even when there is enough space again.
  JkDefrag looks for files in the MFT reserved space and moves them to normal diskspace, making the reserved space available again for the MFT.

On most harddisks the beginning of the harddisk is considerably faster than the

How safe is it?

JkDefrag is based on the standard defragmentation API by Microsoft, a system library that is included in Windows 2000, 2003, XP, and Vista. Most defragmenters are based on this API, including commercial defragmenters.
JkDefrag is therefore very solid and there is no risk of losing data. You can stop the program at any time, it will finish the current file in the background. If your disks use NTFS then you’re even safe when the computer crashes in the middle of defragmenting. Nevertheless, it’s still a good idea to backup before defragmenting,
just like with other defragmenters, because the heavy use of the harddisk may trigger a hardware fault (disk crash), and/or overheating (disk, power supply, controller chipset, etc.).
Defragmentation and optimizing will not only make a harddisk faster, but also lengthen it’s life span. The disk will have less work to do and therefore have less wear and tear. Secondly, the sorting optimization strategies (see the “-a” option) will refresh all the magnetic data on your harddisk. However, defragmenting and optimizing is work, so
excessive defragmenting and optimizing can actually cause more wear and tear than it prevents. JkDefrag is therefore set for “fast” optimization by default, intended to be used on a daily basis. The other optimizations should only be used occasionally.

Smart Techie Recomendation: I am using it for more than an year and I could never blame my laptop/PC harddisks for running slowly. **Highly Recommended** and I suggest you to make use of the automatic screen-saver activated defrag mode for hasle-free operation.

[Thanks: Jeroen Kessels - jeroen at kessels dot com]

~ by bijuk on November 29, 2007.