Web Talk

One of the most loved and hated features in Windows Vista is, without any doubt, its defrag utility. As a matter of fact, at a certain point of your computer’s life you will have to use it, and this will make you curse at Microsoft for hours. This little embedded utility is very important if you are one of those guys loving speedy-things because, once your computer starts slowing down, it defrags the hard disk to make it run faster. Basically, it gathers files that were stored on various areas into one continuous file. If you use Microsoft degrag this simple procedure could take hours discouraging from using it the next time. So, what alternatives are there to avoid this pain in the butt? There are lots of free defrag utilities in the Internet. These are some of the most used ones

Auslogics Disk Defrag

This freeware software provided by Auslogis is specifically designed to stop sluggishness and crashes caused by disk fragmentation. It is very simple to use, doesn’t require any knowledge nor analysis phase (it is the procedure prior to the defrag itself) and it is faster than the one which comes with Microsoft operative systems. It is fully compatible with Vista/XP/2000/2003, 32-bit and 64-bit and it supports dual-core CPU. Reading from Auslogics wesbite: “

Disk Defrag CNet Video [+]

“Auslogics Disk Defrag was designed to remedy system sluggishness and crashes caused by disk fragmentation. It is optimized to work with today’s modern hard disks. Auslogics Disk Defrag is extremely simple to use, does not require any analysis phase and is faster than most of the other disk defragmentation software. It will help you get the maximum performance out of your expensive hardware investments. And, what’s most important, it’s absolutely free.”

WinContig

This free software is very light and doesn’t even require you to install it since it is a stand-alone program! Its smart technology just defrag those files which need to be defragged without the need to scan the whole hard disk. “In addition, WinContig allows you to group files into profiles, and also it accepts a number of optional command-line switches that you can use to control how the program operates”. It works on Windows 2000, XP and Vista. To download it, click here.

JkDefrag

JkDefrag is a completely automatic free defrag utility “easy to use, fast, low overhead, with several optimization strategies”. It can handle floppies, USB disks, memory sticks, and anything else that looks like a disk to Windows. It is compatible with Windows 2000/2003/XP/Vista/2008 and include a screensaver version. JkDefrag is freeware and it is released under a GNU General Public License. To download it, click here.

SpeeDefrag

This freeware utility promises you to defrag your computer at light speed. More than a defrag it can be considered a Windows defrag optimizer! In fact, it refreshes the RAM and load the degrag.exe utility. “This imposes minimum load on the system and therefore defragmentation speed is increased”. Other features include:

• Defrag of multiple hard disks.
• Optimize your Windows defrag utility.
• It doesn’t overload your operative system.
• Compatible with all Microsoft operative systems.

To download it, click here.

UltraDefrag

This open source free utility defragment your hard disk in a very fast way because the whole process is done by kernel-mode driver. There are three interfaces available namely: graphical, console and native. “The GUI is very useful, because it represents your filesystem visually as a color coded cluster map. The console is another option for those that prefer the command line. It is also allows you to run UltraDefrag from the task scheduler and scripts. Finally, the native executable will run at boot time in a manner similar to chkdsk.” Other features include:

• Fast defragmentation.
• Totally written in C.
• No skins, no unnecessary things.
• Generate html reports of fragmentation status.
• Compatible with Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003,Windows Vista.

To download it, click here.