With the advent of solid-state drives, users not only enjoy superior transfer speeds but can also set aside a classic maintenance chore: defragmentation. For traditional hard drives, however, the need to organize files hasn't gone anywhere. We've explored individual solutions before, but today we'll offer a general overview and present what we consider the five best defragmenters.
One of the most interesting details I've noticed about defragmenters is the level of disagreement among them. Depending on the developer and the algorithms used, a hard drive might be over 20 percent fragmented, or not need any optimization at all. That discrepancy forces us to evaluate several defragmenters at once and choose the one that seems “most intact”. It's not an easy decision, because it's a stable market with products that have years of development behind them. Only one of the five suggestions we'll make today can be interpreted as a “complement” to another defragmenter, while the rest are definitely complete, independent tools. Let's begin.
Defraggler
The developer behind the very famous and still essential CCleaner decided a while back to offer users its own defragmentation solution, which led to the birth of Defraggler. The program allows us to customize various aspects of each session and also processes free space, so it already shapes up as a superior option to Windows' built-in defragmenter.
UltraDefrag
Compact, efficient, and open source, UltraDefrag has earned its place in the market thanks to a solid combination of ease of use and advanced options, such as swap file processing and a console mode ideal for administrators who don't need an interface. It's available in three versions (x86, x64, and Itanium) and also has a portable edition.
MyDefrag
MyDefrag's official development stopped years ago, and even its official website went down, but that hasn't stopped it from maintaining its position as one of the best defragmenters on the market. Personally, I believe its level of flexibility is unrivaled, although that makes it a less friendly option for novices. A good alternative is MyDefragGUI.
Auslogics Disk Defrag
The folks at Auslogics have come a long way with their defragmenter, and they have undoubtedly left their humble origins behind to become a robust option, capable of tasks like consolidating free space, cleaning the MFT zone, defragmenting multiple hard drives simultaneously, and excluding items we prefer to keep intact (for example, encrypted folders).
Contig
Contig is a very special example among defragmenters. It lacks an interface, all commands are entered via console, and it doesn't have the advanced options we see in similar programs, but the point is it doesn't need them. Its priority is to defragment individual files or folders, and in that task, it's the best. I use it a lot to process the Steam folder after several downloads.
With the mention of Contig, we complete today's series. Yes, I'm sure I'm forgetting some defragmenter, but I admit I decided not to include commercial editions like Diskeeper or PerfectDisk because, to be completely honest, I don't think they can justify their price today. Would you like to add your defragmenter to the list? The comments are open. Good luck!
