Windows XP forum: Win XP Defrag OR Norton Speed Disk?

at least 1 good thing came from ME. It's smaller than, but will work on, 95-98. Faster. Had 1 guy try it on XP and said it's faster. Seems safe. Been doing this for a year with no reported trouble.

to choose wheather or not to defrag efficiently doesnt lie in the software.
it also has its faults
1.) it benchmarks your drive and hardware
frag only when you notice slow performance
usually means that you have installed more than enough software to conflict with what you already have as a norm
like aol norton becomes a malicious install and hogs all your resources and contains lots of junk
i know all this from experience
attempt to take complete control of your machine as manufacturers defaults them so when ur stuck u have to contact the manufacturer
when i need to defrag i repair my xp by re-installing the OEM OS.
I never need to back my files up just repair without deleting anything,so defauts your puters for you to be absolute master admin, besides you have paid n full for the hardware. ask me any ? if i went over your heads...lol
Have a grand day

Fred
intellgent1@hotmail.com

why would you want speed for defragging.... i set mine to defragging and continue with other things unrelated to the computer. such as sleep or tv when i come back/or awake it is usually done.. and norton would certainly not ever find a cluster on my computer.... i want to be in control of the computer. and not have to contend with norton spreading itself throughout your computer.... the add and remove programs cannot completely remove it. then you are stuck with all kinds of flags and warnings, anything that is associated with the name norton on it stays out of my computers.

Thank you and have a nice day or nite which ever the case may be.... Abobble2

In older better times it used to be a good set of utilities. Now it is crap. It infects your whole system and registry, and hogs recources.

They both suck! Windows XP Defrag utility is based on a licensed version of a commercial defrag engine that should remain nameless. Norton Speed Disk does not offer the options that would make it truly flexable. I use PerfectDisk v7.0 on a regular basis. It is supurb in it's flexability and stability. It is not expensive and it's operation is safe.

Download PerfectDisk and other defraggers, Defrag the drive using 1 program at a time and check the analyzing feature from each defragging program after each program does its job. This is just a little way to prove Perfects destorys the competition hands down. If someone wants even more prove, use a Bench testing program. And yes agree Diskeeper is a better defragger then standard XP and Norton but don't be suprise after doing some test you'll find Diskeeper didn't do such a great job as expected. I'll even put this out, to me diskeeper is a high performance Xp standard defragger. Even I after doing several passes with each defrag program I found that Diskeeper even degrade performance.

I have owned Diskeeper ver 7.0 for over 2 years now and I've been quite satisfied with it. But upon seeing the name Perfect bantered about as the best defragger, I went to the Raxco site and downloaded the trial version.

I took a partition which is 70% full including Win XP and programs that gets fragmented quickly.

I made three passes with Perfect, including an off-line boot pass. I then analyzed the partition with Perfect and found that 118 fragmented files remained. I defragged with Perfect once more, making a total of four passes.

Analyzing again showed 117 slightly fragmented files.

I analyzed it with Diskeeper 7.0, which showed roughly the same results. I then defragged once with Diskeeper and analyzed the partition. There were zero fragmented files.

I closed Diskeeper and opened Perfect and ran another analyzation. Perfect showed the same results as Diskeeper!

I am not married to anyone's software, but I DO want the best for my computer. I believe I gave Perfect more than ample opportunity to defrag my partition.

When one pass with Diskeeper cleaned up what Perfect failed to accomplish in four passes, and BOTH programs showed the same results when they analyzed it, I know for a fact that Diskeeper outperformed Perfect, even with a two year old version which doesn't have all the bells and whistles.

Like they say, the proof is in the pudding. The only way I could have been certain which program is the best was to have ran them both side by side.

Maybe next year, Perfect.

Incidentally, I once was a firm believer in Norton. I have had two different desktops so screwed up by Norton that I ultimately reformatted each one and removed Norton. One was a fairly new install of Windows just over two years ago. I called Microsoft and spoke to their techs on the phone, describing step by step what I had done. The tech told me the biggest favor I could do for myself would be reformat the drive, reinstall Windows, and throw Norton away.

I could not be paid to install a Norton product on any of my four computers.

I wouldn't think that was even possible...

Widows XP defrag is effective and easy to use. Norton gets over complicated and is no better. I don'y like Norton!
Regards

Bill

Have tried them all. I have speedisk (in Systemworks, all years) and when it first came out long before XP it was great. Now...I don't even install it. Don't run it and XP Defrag both, they will conflict in how they place files on your drive.

Diskeeper & Perfectdisk are both far better solutions than XP or Norton, and you can run both though minor movements will be repeated (mostly directories.) Personally I use Perfectdisk, as it puts all files together and gives me more consecutive free clusters. Plus, Perfectdisk moves a file once, Diskeeper will often move it several times (at least initially.) I also don't like Set & Forget in Diskeeper running when I am working, but you can set it for after hours which is fine. In addition, Diskeeper has issues when your running short of disk space on a drive, Perfectdisk does not.

As for all the Norton bashing, I still use Internet Security and Systemworks (with selective install of later) plus a router. Yes, Norton will slow a computer down (mostly at bootup), but on my dual-core machine its no biggie. But after getting a virus WITH Zone Alarm Pro 6.x Security Suite (and Norton AntiVirus both detetect and removed it), I have not went back...If you run Diskeeper or Perfectdisk with Norton Goback (I don't run Goback either (prefer Ghost 2003 or Ghost 10), be sure to exclude the goback data file from the defrag or either one will hose Norton Goback.

Deffo you should use Norton Speed disk
you will see the whole process separated by different colours
once you finished the 1'st disk optimisation you can setup additional settings such as ordered optimalisation to each partition you have, wich files optimised 1'st or last... Unmoveable files are useful too.
I recommend you set up large files like videos as unomveable but this depends on how many of them continuous
Your free space will be at the same place wich is important for the next files you want to put on the HDD

I love all norton products
Hope my english was enough
CHEERS