Shuffling all those huge video files around makes your homemade HTPC’s hard drive a real mess. It’s vital to defragment your disk regularly to keep things running smoothly, but is Windows XP’s built-in defragmenter up to the job?
With poor scheduling options, a not so hot GUI, and a lack of power-user options, it’s certainly worth taking a peek at some other defragmenting candidates. I can think of no better resource than the Great Defrag Shootout. Thirty five different ways to defragment your DVR’s hard drive.
For even more reading, peruse the defrag section of Lifehacker’s library.
And if you’re really into defragging, go ahead and pick up this shirt.
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Kojak | August 14th, 2007 at 11:08 am | link
There are so many options in the market for defrag software, but I have been a satisfied Diskeeper user for two or three years now. Presently I am on the 2007 Pro version and I am very happy with its performance. It defrags quickly whenever I run a manual defrag job, but those are rare occasions involving boot-time defrag, since I usually I leave it on the automatic defragment mode. It runs quietly in the background keeping my 3 drives in good shape without nagging me. Highly recommended.
Ian | August 14th, 2007 at 12:39 pm | link
@kojak Thanks for the tip on Diskeeper. The auto mode sounds perfect. The hardest part of defragging is simply remembering to keep on top of it, I think.
join | August 15th, 2007 at 9:26 am | link
I recently cleaned out a *whole lot* of unnecessary programs, pictures and games from the system and the fragmentation graph looked like it had caught some serious killer disease. It was so red that i thought it was too late to do any damage control. I think these chores ought to be done at shorter intervals to avoid killing the comp.