| Product: |
Auslogics Disk Defrag |
| Date: |
19.05.08 (124 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Free, easy to use, good results
Disadvantages: No scheduler
AusLogics Disk Defrag. Does exactly what it says- not exactly glamorous or exciting. This is another free download from www.download.com, and no, they do not (unfortunately) pay me to keep mentioning their website in my reviews. We should, in theory, all defrag our hard drives on a regular basis- in layman's terms to put linked files together to reduce hard drive access time. Windows XP and Vista already come with a pre-installed defrag programme, so why bother downloading another one?
Well firstly, the download is pain free and, being only 1.5MB, takes seconds to download. Opening the programme reveals a polished interface with a simple pull down menu from which to select your hard drive and then away it goes. Just let the programme run. That's it. There is a settings menu which allows you to change literally a couple of settings, one potentially useful option being CPU usage- but I haven't bothered with this.
The defragging process itself is very fast, especially when compared to the standard Windows programme. There is also display showing you Disk Defrag at work, but best just wait for the report to come through when it's finished. AusLogics Disk Defrag also gives you the option to view a detailed report of its work, showing what could not be defragged etc. It also tells you about a load of junk files that MAY be present on that drive. Clicking on the link takes you to their website where they try to sell you software. This is annoying, but easily ignored.
One missing feature is a schedule option. This would be useful for people who want the programme to run automatically once a week, or to set it overnight if you have very large hard drives. However, I find the scan is very quick for my 80GB hard drive so I just manually set it to defrag every now and then.
One question I have often wondered is: does all this defragging actually give any benefits whatsoever? The benefits are supposedly faster performance and reduced hard drive wear and tear, as the hard drive has to work less on a defragmented drive. I don't think I have ever noticed any tangible benefits, especially with operating system and hard drive improvements (such as faster seek times). But, I do feel there is no harm in keeping things maintained.
Whether or not you feel there are benefits to defragging, it is the programme being reviewed here and it does its job extremely well- it is fast, easy to use and efficient. I have run the default Windows Disk Defragger 'analyze' option after using this programme, and it is always happy with the state of the hard drive after an AusLogics defrag. Also, from what I have read, the programme is highly respected as well. I highly recommend it, especially if you use the Windows Defrag programme and find it slow and inefficient.
Websites:
www.auslogics.com/en/
www. download.com
www.softpedia.com
Summary: Good bit of free PC maintenance software
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