Every hard drive works slower and slower over time. If you don’t use it, it doesn’t. However, a speed reduction occurs if you use the HDD drive (Hard D.isk D.rive) work actively – so often save new files, edit existing ones and thus let them grow in size, delete files and then write them again to the drive. The read / write head of the HDD then distributes newly created file fragments so that they are not in one piece. The future reading of the affected files will take longer. You can find more detailed information on PC brake fragmentation in another article.
With defragmentation software you rearrange the components of scattered files. This results in more speed when reading in the data; secondary there are sometimes minimal write throughput boosts. Incidentally, in contrast to HDDs, fragmentation does not slow down SSDs; it is even desirable internally with flash drives. As a result, defragmenters applied to SSD drives do not cause any leaps in speed – they only torment the drive with write operations and promote premature wear. However, if you are using a computer with a classic hard drive, you should defragment it regularly. There is no wear and tear because HDDs, unlike SSDs, can withstand any number of write cycles. Defrags are useful here.
Today HDDs hardly serve as a boot drive, this role is taken over by the faster SSDs. Hard drives are sometimes no longer installed and if they are, they can usually be inexpensively expanded with a tight SSD storage space. Whether you use an old PC with an HDD as a boot drive or a newer computer with an SSD as a boot drive plus an HDD as a data dump: In both cases, you can use a good defrag tool to make an HDD with a high degree of fragmentation work.
UltraDefrag in the test: What is the tool good for?
A special example among the defragmenters is UltraDefrag. The software is open source – which is a unique selling point in the thinned defrag market. The open source approach may make the software appealing to you, but it is not enough on its own: a good defragmenter must excel with pure technology. At the first approach, this includes a successful user interface. It ensures a constant flow of operations and ensures that you will be happy to use the software a second time. This is at least necessary if you want to optimize partitions manually. Functionally powerful defrag tools have a scheduler that allows time-based disk tuning; in theory, you never need to visit a nice defragmenter interface again. Other desirable features are boot time defrags (rearrange locked system files on restart) and MFT optimization. We checked UltraDefrag for these characteristics.
In addition to the open source approach, UltraDefrag has another special feature: The tool is available in version 7, which is free. There is also UltraDefrag 9, which has lost its free character and is proprietary. So the product is not open source. Open source and chargeable would not go well together – just as, incidentally, portable software is almost never designed for commercial purposes. A test version of UltraDefrag 9 cannot be downloaded: We did not find anything on the manufacturer’s website or from external sources. Among the latter, however, we found a web installer contaminated with advertising, which ultimately only opened the official project page in the browser – but from which we did not get an UltraDefrag 9 installer. You could also call up this page without a dubious web installer.
We do not recommend loading questionable (UltraDefrag) download managers. So that you don’t buy a pig in a poke, we will tell you in this article what impression UltraDefrag 9 makes. It starts with UltraDefrag 7, which appeals to a wider audience because it is freely available.
UltraDefrag 7: Review
The UltraDefrag surface pleases with its sobriety, although it could be more modern. However, the open source (!) Software is beating the drum – penetrating and over and over again, annoying.
“You come here [ins Internet] not in “- after the UltraDefrags EXE file was blocked in the Windows firewall, there was calm when it came to advertising pop-ups.
Above, a table lists the existing partitions including their size, free space in gigabytes and percent, and the degree of fragmentation. You only have to determine the latter, which you can either do with the F5 key or a menu bar icon. The defrag algorithms as well as the analysis function are available in the menu bar and in the toolbar. The third option is keyboard shortcuts – for “Defragment”, “Quickly optimize” and “Complete optimization” and even “Optimize MFT”. Further information on the Windows MFT (M.aster F.ile Table) can be found in a dedicated guide. The MFT optimization is part of the boot time defragmentation with IObit’s competitor tool Smart Defrag, with UltraDefrag it is a separate menu item. There is no explanation of which optimization does what. However, those interested can access a local HTML manual with additional information in English via the menu bar help menu.
We created artificial fragmentation on an NTFS-formatted partition of a USB HDD. According to UltraDefrag, the degree of fragmentation was around 50 percent. “Complete optimization” shrinks the value to 0.00 percent.
More speed: the best tuning tools
The number of options in the “Settings> Sort” menu is varied: Here you specify whether you want to “Sort by path”, “Sort by size”, “Sort by creation time”, “Sort by modification time” or “Sort by last access time ” want. For each of the options, you can use another radio button to choose whether you want to “sort in ascending order” or “sort in descending order”. In this respect, only O&O Defrag Professional can keep up with a large number of algorithms.
UltraDefrag can be adjusted via “Settings> Options” or by pressing the F10 key. A bit in the manner of Firefox’s about: config, this is done text-based.
You can change the other settings by editing the options.lua file in a text editor. It doesn’t work graphically – anachronistic, but with a certain nerd charm. Among other things, you set the minimize_to_system_tray by entering the value 1, so that the program should nestle in the system tray information area when the window is minimized. There are no extras like checking the drive temperature or displaying SMART health data. Defrag processes cannot be initiated via the drive context menu in the tool. The latter is noticeably annoying in everyday life. At least there is an integration into the Windows context menu, so that you can tune individual files in Explorer with a right click. When we tried to defragment an SSD partition in the test, fatally, no warning message appeared.
UltraDefrag: test conclusion
UltraDefrag leaves mixed feelings: nerds should agree that the tool is open source and that the configuration is done using a text editor. The latter is more likely to be perceived by the 08/15 users as unpleasant. Functionally, the basics are incorporated, nothing more. The software successfully coped with our test fragmentation. All in all, other defrag tools are better, especially since they support SSDs and they don’t just defragment them without warning. The Smart Defrag tool, for example, not only saves SSDs from damaging defrags, but also sends them the meaningful and speed-enhancing TRIM command. UltraDefrag is probably only the best fit for you if you really want it to be an open source solution.
The advantages and disadvantages of UltraDefrag:
+ Open source + Many sorting functions + Fixed our test fragmentation + Boot time defrag – Obsolete interface – Advertising when the program starts – Few functions, defragments SSDs (harmful), does not trim them
UltraDefrag 9: Review
The UltraDefrag 9 interface is not more attractive than that of the free software version. Fortunately, there is no advertising like the one shown in the latter application.
We eyed UltraDefrag 9.0.1, its Standard edition 19.99 euros (Enterprise: 39.99 euros) costs. Advantages compared to the free open source variant are the extensive options menu “Process> Defragmentation at Windows start” and a graphical user interface for settings. The offered automatic jobs that come into effect after a defrag are as varied as with the free sibling program: “Do nothing”, “Quit”, “Save energy”, “Idle state”, “Log off”, “Restart”, ” Shut down”. In the configuration interface you can choose to skip fragments with a minimum size of megabytes when rearranging.
The lush sorting algorithms seem a bit more plausible thanks to the graphical config dialog. The “automatic defragmentation” is meant nicely, but modestly easy to set up: This is done by pressing a button on the Windows task planner (taskschd.msc). Calling up the settings window is a bit cumbersome: Click on “Settings> Options”; the latter menu item is the only entry under “Settings”. Could the “Options” – not swap places with the “Settings” command and thus lead to the configuration center more quickly? Unfortunately, UltraDefrag 9 defragments SSDs. The tool is more modern than its twin, but weaker than freeware like Smart Defrag. We recommend UltraDefrag 9 only to fans of the 7 version.
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