MaximumPC 2008 06

Designing the Experiment

Fragmenting a hard drive is harder than you think, thanks to Windows Vista

58 | MAXIMUMPC | JUN 08 | http://www.maximumpc.com

THE DISK

DEFRAG
DIFFERENCE

THE SYSTEM

For our tests, we’re using an HP TouchSmart

IQ770 Desktop machine that has been in

constant service as a security-monitoring

webcam workstation for the last several

months. Due to the amount of use (and

abuse) this poor 1.6GHz AMD Turion-based

machine has endured, we expected it to be

fragmented beyond belief. And it would

have been, were it not for the fact that Vista’s

automatic defragmentation utility is sched-

uled to run every week.

Unlike Windows XP, which uses a

stripped-down version of Diskeeper to defrag

drives, the Windows Vista application has

been redesigned from the ground up. Micro-

soft claims that the new defragger makes for

faster, less processor-intensive defragmenta-

tion. While it’s true that the Vista defragger

doesn’t hit our system as hard as the XP

defrag process, it takes much, much longer to

complete, making Microsoft ’s claim of faster

performance baffl ing.

Because Vista’s defragger runs automati-

cally every week, it would be extremely un-

usual to fi nd a heavily fragmented Vista drive

in the real world. That said, prior to testing,

we disabled Vista’s defragger, uninstalled a

few apps, and then fi lled the empty space

with a collection of MP3s and other newly in-

stalled applications to replicate a busy week

for a power user.

THE DEFRAGGERS

We’ve chosen four products for this chal-

lenge, starting with Vista’s built-in defrag-

mentation program. Against that, we’re

testing the free Auslogics Disk Defrag, as

well as two commercial defragging utilities:

Raxco’s PerfectDisk 2008 and Diskeeper

2008. This healthy mix of free and paid-for
      defragmentation soft ware will allow us to
      determine if there is any benefi t to using
      a third-party defragger, and if so, just how
      much the commercial apps can improve our
      rig’s performance.

THE BENCHMARKS

So that each defrag utility operates on an

identical machine, we captured a complete

image of the original drive using Norton Ghost

12 and then reloaded it onto the machine

prior to running

each program. To

measure the per-

formance impact

of each utility,

we looked at the

machine’s startup

times, shutdown

times, and PCMark

Vantage scores be-

fore and aft er the

defrag. We chose

Vantage as our

primary bench-

mark because it

represents a num-

ber of real-world

performance sce-

narios one would

encounter during

an extended period

of computer use.

We also factored in

the time each utility took to perform its defrag

to test our theory that Vista’s defragger—low

priority though it may be—still takes an inor-

dinate length of time to complete.

Prior to making the Ghost image of our

drive, we ran PCMark Vantage’s hard drive

performance script 20 times. Since typical de-

fragmentation programs reorder data based

on frequency of use, we wanted to make sure

they take our benchmark into account.

Vista’s built-in defrag program reported

a fragmentation level of 11 percent prior

to the defragmentation process. We were

able to obtain this information only by using

the command-line version of the app—the

standard interface doesn’t provide any

information about your drive’s state, nor

does it report on the defragmenter’s progress.

It took Vista’s app three and a half hours to

defrag our test drive. Vista’s lengthy defrag

times are due largely to the fact that it runs as

a low-priority process. The application won’t

make full use of your processor unless the

computer sits idle for several minutes.

While the program reportedly reduced

fragmentation on our drive to zero percent,

we saw negligible performance gains in our

PCMark Vantage tests. The startup time im-

proved by 39 seconds, but the process added

an additional 14 seconds to our shutdown

time. Regardless of whether the culprit is our

slow test rig, Vista itself, or the insignifi cance

of drive fragmentation on performance,

Vista’s built-in defragmentation application

did little to improve the real-world perfor-

mance of our computer.

HP’s TouchSmart IQ770 Desktop isn’t the speedi-

est of rigs, which forced us to measure our de-

fragmentation runs in hours rather than minutes.

The command-line version of Vista’s defragger provides much more

information than the GUI version.

Best scores are bolded.

BENCHMARKS

Fragmented Fragmented Fragmented Vista Drive Vista Drive Windows Vista DefragVista DefragWindows Windows

PCMark Overall 3,114 3,162

Startup (sec) 172 133

Shutdown (sec) 20 34