Defrag your way to happiness…or something like that
by zoocat in
tech
during lunch time on
September 7th, 2005:
4 years, 10 months ago
So, I went back to Longview this weekend to visit ye olde family. It was a good trip, we had much good food and, above all, good tech. During my short visit, I managed to turn my WinXP laptop into a MacOSX box for a few hours, play, then put everything back the way it was. I definitely recommend that, it was fun.
During the course of all these changes, though, I realized that I hadn’t defragmented my hard drive in quite some time. However, I don’t like the Windows default defrag utility. It’s slow, only semi-effective, and starts over every time you think about touching a single file on the computer. But, I have this problem, see. I don’t like to pay for things, and every other defrag program I knew of costs money. So, I asked my good buddy Google (he’s a real know-it-all), and he told me to check out DIRMs. Now, I had my doubts that a programs with such a stupid name could do much for me, but I was won over in the end by a trial run (I sacrificed my parents computer to the gods of experimentation…what? you thought I’d risk MY computer??). It was fast, effective, and….well, that just about says it. Plus I love the name, because it stands for, “Do It Right, Microsoft”. Anyone that bitter at Bill Gates can’t be ALL bad, can they? The same guy also makes a program called Buzzsaw that sits in the background as an idle task, and does a constant, on-the-fly defrag of your drive. So, I’m sold. It’s free, and it’s quite snappy, as long as you can handle a command-line interface. But, really, look who I’m writing to. If you can’t handle cmd.exe, close this page. NOW!
4 Responses to 'Defrag your way to happiness…or something like that'
I’ve been using Diskeeper for a while. It doesn’t run in the background, which I didn’t like since my PC is old. One more program in the back won’t help. What it does though is analyze each day and provide a POP-up report on where you’re at. The evalution version is free forever. NOt sure what the pricey version does extra, but the free one defrags which is all I need it to do. It’s also easy, just a few button presses. Some people may want it if your suggestion doesn’t work for them.
[Quote]Hmmm…I didn’t know that Diskeeper has a perpetual evaluation version. I’ll have to give it a look. The thing I like about Buzzsaw is that it runs at idle priority, so that even on your on Win98 box, it will only take up processor cycles when your computer has nothing better to do. So, it shouldn’t slow you down at all, but it should make good use of the time you computer normally spends letting the little windows logo fly around the monitor.
[Quote]LOL. Reminds me of a time when I had a few friends who completely changed another friend’s computer into a Mac format - not the actual operating system, but every single Mac modification to Win98 that they could possibly find. I’m told that his jaw nearly unhinged when he came back from the weekend only to discover that his PC now made that neat little “boing” sound when he turned it on. Poor Aaron. I’m fairly certain he had to reinstall the sucker.
You should look forward to my free software bonanza post once I finish it; much goodness for completely free (legit too) software.
[Quote]Funny you should mention such a thing…there is actually an install package out there now that makes every mod you could imagine to mac your computer effectively a mac, if you’re not brave enough to try a real install the way I did. Check it out - flyakite.
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