Contig and Power Defragmenter GUI 2.0.125 Reviewed

[Quakindude]

I've been searching websites on the 'Net looking for a free defrag utility that is easy to use, better than the included utility in Windows and which does an excellent job. Well, here it is. The only negative part to this free utility is that you can't schedule defrags with it. It's a totally manual program, however, for what it does and how good it is, I can live with doing it manually.

Did I mention that the following two programs are free?

First off, make a new folder on your Desktop called Defrag. Then download Contig, unzip it into the new folder on your Desktop.

Next, download Power Defragmenter GUI and unzip it to the new folder called Defrag on your Desktop.

When both files are in your new folder, it will look like this:



You will want to double click on the Power Defragmenter Icon. When the GUI fires up, you'll be presented with this view:



Just click the "Next" button. you will then be presented with:



Now if you've never used this app before, you'll want to click on the radio button for "Power Mode Disk Defragmentation." Regardless of whether you choose Power Mode or Defragment Disk, you will come to the next screen which allows you to choose the drive you want to defrag:



Once you've selected the drive you wish to deframent, simply click on the Defragment button on the bottom of that window. When the app starts the chore, you will get a DOS box that will display the innards of the programs job:



When the defrag is completed, you'll see this in the DOS box:



You'll have a wait a little bit, from 15-45 seconds, and the DOS box will automatically close, taking you to this next window:



Just click on the OK button and you will be returned to this screen:



You can now click "Next" to select another drive for degramentation or exit the program.

Power Mode does a more in-depth defragmentation and should be used if this is the first time you've used the program. After you've done a Power Mode Defrag, which takes the longest as you've probably already surmised, you can do a "Defragment Disk" routine which is much faster than the power Mode.

I allowed my C: and E: drives to become hugely fragmented by installing and removing games and other programs. Also, by copying large files, like entire game directories, to and from the two drives and then deleting them, I was able to reach a 20% fragmentation on both drives.

Windows Defrag took over 50 minutes to defrag both drives. "Power Mode" in this app took just 20 minutes for both drives. Start-up times for my C: drive being so defragmented were 1m48s. After the Windows defrag, it was 1m26s. After doing the Power mode, it was a scant 55 seconds from the time I pushed the Power On button on my case to being on the Windows Desktop.

Hope you enjoy this app. Despite the fact that you can't schedule events with it, this little program has done an excellent job of keeping my files and drives healthy and organized, off setting the inability to schedule defrags.

These two programs were developed and published by Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell. You can read more about this program and others from Sysinternal here. Sysinternal was acquired by Microsoft in July 2006.

-Tom

[Capper]

Wow, might be a good alternative for those who don't want to pony up big bucks for Diskeeper Professional

[Darkfry]

I used it and it only took about 5 minutes for me. It made me dizzy watching it. . .Thanks.

[gvblake22]

Great post, thanks! I used this on my computer at work. Windows Disk Defragmenter wouldn't defragment the entire disk but this actually moved the file fragments, thanks!!

[Quakindude]

Originally Posted by gvblake22

Great post, thanks! I used this on my computer at work. Windows Disk Defragmenter wouldn't defragment the entire disk but this actually moved the file fragments, thanks!!

No problem. I love this little app. I've used it for a while now, but I wanted to look over the interwebberthingy and see if there was anything out there that was better than this one; and it had to be free. I couldn't find another app that met those criteria.

[Tyreal]

I'm tempted to try this out but I don't know if it's better than O&O Defrag...

[PrOLifIC_onE]

I DLed those files and used this defrag option on your recommendation a while back before you did the review. I do really like it.

At that time, the first time I ran it, I did just close the window on Analysis Report like you suggest but I thought that maybe it was still doing something so I decided to let it run. If you leave that last window open, eventually it closes that DOS window itself and shows the defrag completed popup. Do you know if it is still doing something during that time or is it just leaving that Analysis report window up for a certain amount of time for the user to review?

I only ask because in the 2 DOS windows that you show screenshots of, one says its running contig.exe and the second one with the Analysys Report says its running the defrag.exe...

[Quakindude]

You know what? I noticed this very thing late last night for the first time. I listened to my HDD / watched the activity light and as far as I can tell, it wasn't accessing the drive at all. The reason this came up is because once it was done, I tried closing the DOS box and it gave me an error saying the DOS Application was still being used. That's the first time it has done that for me.

Since I've seen this now, and you've just confirmed it as well, I'll go ahead and change it. There's no reason to close a DOS box early if the program will do so on its own.

[Lead Head]

Very good article!

To the thing towards then end where you said you wonder why MS hasn't incorporated it into Vista or an XP service pack. From what I can tell, Microsoft is trying to move as far as they possibly can from anything DOS based, which might explain it.

[Quakindude]

I hear ya. But being Microsoft, you'd think they could incorporate the defrag engine into the Windows GUI.

But then again, it is Microsoft.