SpeedUp Your PC. Freeware Defragment, Optimize Files On Your HDD

Are you troubled by slow PC with rattling and spinning hard disks not yielding fast enough results? Try this Freeware defrag utility called MyDefrag. It not only handles the basic drive defragmentation tasks, it also includes a powerful scripting engine, a screensaver, and a command-line version.

MyDefrag is based on the previously named JkDefrag utility, but there’s no regular options dialog for MyDefrag instead, a set of included scripts handles a variety of defrag tasks immediately, but can be customized to perform much more advanced tasks. For instance, if you wanted to move all your music files to the fastest part of the disk, you can do so easily with a simple script—it’s probably not the best choice for the less tech-savvy reader, but the powerful command-line scripting options are very welcome.

It works for Windows 2000, 2003, XP, Vista, 7, and for x64. It is freeware, no time limit, fully functional, no advertisements. Fast, low overhead, with many optimization strategies, can handle floppies, USB disks, memory sticks, and anything else that looks like a disk to Windows. Included are a set of easy-to-use scripts for endusers, a scripting engine for demanding users, a screensaver, and a combined Windows plus commandline version that can be scheduled by the Windows task scheduler or for use from administrator scripts.
MyDefrag is extremely solid because it is based on the standard defragmentation API by Microsoft, a system library that is included in Windows 2000, 2003, XP, Vista, and 2008. Most defragmenters are based on this API, including the free defragmenter that comes with Windows and many commercial defragmenters. Basically all MyDefrag does is send “move this file to that location” commands to the API. The API is part of the operating system and can safely move almost any file on the disk, without risk and while the computer is in full use.
– Defragmention: Imagine a book split into several parts, some pages are over here, other pages in another room on another floor altogether. You will have to walk a lot when you need to read the book. It may sound silly, but this is exactly what happens to files on your harddisk. Defragmentation will put all the parts (fragments) back together, making your computer a lot faster.
– Optimization: Imagine a big library with lots of books, spread out all over the building and not sorted whatsoever. There is an index telling you exactly where every book is, but you will have to walk a lot when you need several books. This is exactly what happens on your harddisk, the files that belong to an software can be all over the place, anywhere on the harddisk. Optimization will bring all the files together in one place, leaving the rest of the harddisk empty, and will sort the files, for example alphabetically.
Defragmentation and optimization will not only make a harddisk faster, but also lengthen it’s life span, because the disk will have less work to do and therefore have less wear and tear. Also, it will refresh and strengthen the magnetic data on the harddisk by simply reading the (weakened) data and writing it afresh. However, defragmenting and optimizing is work, so excessive defragmenting and optimizing can actually cause more wear and tear than it prevents.
– On most harddisks the beginning of the harddisk is considerably faster than the end, sometimes by as much as 200 percent! You can measure this yourself with utilities such as HD Tune. MyDefrag is therefore geared towards moving all files to the beginning of the disk.
– MyDefrag organizes files into zones, such as directories, Windows files, files used while booting, regular files, and rarely used files. The most accessed files are placed at the beginning of the harddisk, and files that are commonly used together are placed in close proximity to each other. This results in a dramatic speed increase, and is in fact more important than defragmentation. The software comes with scripts with a zone organization suitable for most users, power users can customize the zones through scripts.
– Sorting the files on your disk can give you even more speed. There are several sorting strategies to choose from. Most of them will take a lot of data shuffling, taking a lot of time for MyDefrag to complete, and therefore should only be used occasionally.
– A running computer will create and delete temporary files like there is no tomorrow. If the harddisk were totally optimized then the only place for new temporary files would be behind all the other data. Which is rather slow. MyDefrag can maintain free spaces at various locations on the disk to make temporary files faster.
– Windows reserves a percentage on NTFS disks for the MFT (Master File Table), but can place normal files there if the rest of the disk is full. The files will remain there, even when there is enough space again. MyDefrag can look for files in the NTFS reserved areas and move them to normal diskspace, making the reserved areas available again for the MFT. The license of this file & disk software is Freeware, you can free download and free use this File & Disk software.