Occasionally on program boot, I could hear the read/write head on my hard drive chattering-not a sound you want to hear. The program did have one disturbing trait. Fragmented writes with NTFS (Windows NT’s file system) are relatively rare unless your drive is nearing capacity or being used in a busy server setup. That omission is not really a problem on the average system, though. After defragging, CrystalDiskMark reported a slight increase in performance, but it was likely due to the drive performing garbage collection.ĭisk Defrag Pro has its own scheduler and a host of advanced management features, but it has no background process to prevent fragmented writes as do Diskeeper and PerfectDisk. However, the SSD optimization did basically nothing and stated so after the fact. This last feature can be useful for applications that require continuous fast access to files, such as video editors.Īuslogics Disk Defrag Pro’s uncluttered interface lets you concentrate on the results.ĭisk Defrag Pro did a very nice job in my hard-drive tests, handling my superfragmented partition and other chores with ease. The program also offers the option to defrag individual files and folders, as you can in Piriform’s free Defraggler. To understand how these might be of benefit, let’s review a few facts.Īuslogics’ Disk Defrag Pro ($30 30-day free trial) is a very capable defragger with a clean interface and multiple defragging options: simple defrag (no consolidation or optimization), SSD optimization, free-space optimization (defragging free clusters), and optimization by the Windows prefetch layout to make booting faster. In addition, NAND is good for only a few thousand write cycles, so defragging can reduce the SSD’s lifespan by unnecessarily writing data to it.ĭespite those arguments, at least four defragging utilities purport to increase SSD performance through optimization: Auslogic’s Disk Defrag Pro, Condusiv’s Diskeeper, Raxco’s PerfectDisk, and SlimCleaner Intelligent Defrag. Defragging these “sectors” is like trying to assemble a jigsaw puzzle blindfolded: You can feel parts of the pattern, but you can’t see the whole picture. The operating system sees it as a hard drive with sectors, but the data is spread all over the drive by the controller. “I found no hard evidence about SSD defragging anywhere I looked, so I decided to gather my own.”Ĭonventional logic dictates that you should never defrag an SSD, because the SSD controller writes data in a scattershot-fashion to multiple NAND chips and locations, using algorithms that only the controller understands.

How do i defrag my imac