greensuperman32

So after reading the thread about if it is necessary to defrag, I began to wonder what the best tool is for defragging. I know there are a few that will do this, iDefrag, Tech Tool Pro, Drive Genius 2 just to name a few.

So I figured I would ask my fellow ehmacers, what is the best tool for defragging?

P.S. Yes I know many of you feel defragging is not necessary on a mac, but this is not what this thread is for so please don't turn this into a discussion about if it is necessary or not. Thanks

HAL 9000

I use iDefrag and have had good success in defraging my hard drive. I did recover a few Gigs of space from a ton of fragmented files. Not much in the way of system performance improvement, that some people were getting from reviews I've read, if there was, it was unnoticeable for me.

jcharlesworth

TechTool Pro's defragging is *horrible* -- it took over 50 hours(!) to defrag my main iMac drive. It kept moving the same (large) files over and over again (like a bubble-sort) rather than computing the final layout and moving the files once. Unbelievably unusable... (plus, if you cancel the operation, you have to wait for it to finish moving the current large file)

I have a 200GB VMWare Fusion virtual machine (i.e. one gigantic 200GB file amongst all my other files), so obviously this caused a huge problem.

Instead, I've switched to iDefrag which is much much smarter about how it defrags a drive. Much quicker (the same drive took 4 hours for a full defrag). Handles "cancel" requests much smarter. Lets you choose the degree of defragging you're willing to wait for (Full, Compact free space, Quick (online) defrag, etc).

I had some issues with the latest release (v1.6.6) with it hanging. But v1.6.5 has been bullet-proof. The developer was quick to respond to my inquiries about the hanging and give me a step-by-step workaround.

I boot off an external USB drive and run iDefrag from there.

I've also got (and been pleased with iPartition) which is now offered at a 2-product bundle price (they introduced the bundle *after* I bought each).

Does this help?

.../j

__________________
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screature

Agreed, do not, repeat, DO NOT use Tech Tools for defragging, it sucks and blows at the same time. iDrive and Drive Genius 2 both work well.

greensuperman32

Yea I had heard before that Tech Tools wasn't any good and iDefrag seems popular in my travels about the internet. How do iDefrag and Drive Genius 2 compare to each other?

bartonfly

so none of these programs come stock on macbook, Is there a program similar that will do the same sort of thing.
thanks bartonfly

screature

Nope. Not built into the OS.

AgentXXL

I recently purchased the iDefrag/iPartition bundle and so far am quite pleased with it. Like J said, boot from an external drive or a bootable CD and both utilities run very well. Coriolis Systems includes a bootable CD maker with the purchase of the bundle.

I did notice some improvement in overall system performance, but iDefrag worked especially well to consolidate free space.

MacDoc

Idefrag is the best by far but it's a one trick pony

Drive Genius is an excellent Swiss Army knife the Mac.

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sergeg1

I use SpeedTools Utilities and find it does a very good job of disk defrag as well as many other things.

Cheers