The more senior computer administrator will remember the old black screen days of DOS and will remember the first Defragmentation tools that became available. Of course back then Defragging a hard drive was quite a novel idea.

I have fond memories of using the Symantec Defrag tool for the first time.  It had a blue background and yellow characters.  I just couldn't believe that my data was as messy as it was.  The first time I defragged my 20Mb hard drive it took ages to do.  It was quite hypnotic watching the cursor jump from one place on the screen to another.  Watching the data getting stacked up near the inner part of the drive.

By the time MS-DOS 6.0a arrived on the scene, defragmenting had become a feature of the Microsoft operating system, with the tools integrated into the OS.

With the advent of Windows, faster computers, bigger hard drives, and files that are full of bloat, defragmenting is something most people will have heard about but something very few home users will actually do.  The tools are hidden away, with no encouragement from the Operating system to use them.

Since Windows 95, the incorporated defrag tool has always done a good job of tidying and re-joining those files that were broken into pieces.  The interface has changed too.  Windows 95 had a never ending scrolling screen of blue coloured boxes, Windows 2000 introduced the current set of bars that never seem to change colour.

The technology behind defragmenting has also changed with programs like Diskeeper and O&O Defrag constantly evolving to provide the quickest and most efficient way of tidying the disk.  Whilst the methods have changed, the goal is still the same - to reduce the amount of fragmented files on the hard drive.

One of the biggest drawbacks of defragmenting is that you need to be at the machine to start it going.  In large schools, defragmenting machines would take an awful lot of man power and time, so the potential benefits from defragmenting are lost.

I am going to introduce you to 3 different defrag tools that can be used on a network without having to visit each machine.  Of course I am going to assume that your network uses Windows XP as the client workstation, although some of the tools will work on Windows 2000 too.

WINDOWS DEFRAG

The first tool we are going to look at is the good old Windows XP defrag. Whats that I hear you should - it can only be ran whilst you are sat at the machine?  Well yes that is true, however you only actually need to have the privileges to run the program and the computer has plenty of privileges to run itself.  Lets look into this.

To run a defrag on Windows XP you need to start the Windows defrag GUI.  There are loads of ways to load it, but they all end up running in the MMC (Microsoft Management Console) as a snap-in. Did you know that there is also a command line method to start the defrag?

Just drop to the command prompt and type

DEFRAG C:

This will start the defrag tool running in command mode.  It doesn't say much whilst it is running, but will achieve the same results.  You can stop the tool from running by pressing CTRL+C.

You can schedule a defrag using the old AT task scheduling tool. For example to schedule a defrag every Friday at 3:30pm;

AT 15:30 /every:F DEFRAG C:

Now this provides a powerful unattended method to defrag your hard drive.  You don't need to be logged into the computer - just leave it switched on.  Defrag will run under the special SYSTEM account.

With a clever bit of batch file programming, this simple command can be deployed to every machine in your domain.

O&O Defrag

I have been using O&O defrag for a number of years, it has an intuitive interface and a number of different defrag methods, that allow a Stealth, Space and complete defrag.  In all there are 5 methods.  I started using O&O defrag on my NT4 server and have kept using it ever since.

Unlike the Windows tool, O&O displays a large image of small squares that represent the disk surface, colours further highlight the levels of fragmentation.  Clicking on the squares will reveal what file is hiding in that square.  I find this view of the drive and level of fragmentation to be very similar to the old DOS defrag programs.  It is sort of relaxing to see your data moving around the hard drive.

O&O Defrag comes in 2 different versions.  There is the professional version that runs in standalone/single station mode and the Server version that provides defragmentation for file servers and also a management console that can be used to defragment individual workstations.

The defrag tool runs as a Windows service and is capable of automatically defragmenting your hard drive with no user interaction.  It takes just one click and O&O will do the rest, automatically working out which is the best method to reduce the levels of fragmentation.  There is even a screen saver mode, so your computer will defragment whilst no-one is using it.

Newer versions of O&O support the Windows layout.ini file that define which files should take priority on the hard drive.  Therefore files that are most needed by the operating system will be moved to the fastest part of the hard drive during the defrag.

The downside of O&O defrag is that it isn't free, but if defragmenting your PCs using a management console will save you thousands in lost man hours, then it is definitely worth investing in.

Find out more and download trial versions of the Professional and Server editions of O&O Defrag by visiting www.oo-software.com for a full list of products for your PC/Network.

DIRMS

This is a very powerful tool that I stumbled upon.  It does all the same stuff as the Windows Defrag and others like O&O or Diskeeper.  However it does something that these heavy weights don't appear to do.  It can partially defragment a file, meaning that on a heavily fragmented drive with little space it will do a much better job of joining all of fragmented files back together.

DIRMS stands for "Do It Right Microsoft" and was written to overcome some of the limitations that the "big boys" had with there defrag tools.  The tool is lightweight and fairly simple to use.  It is command line based, so can be scheduled like the Windows tool.

The interesting thing about this tool, is that it uses the same Windows API functions that the other defrag tools use.  Makes you wonder why you have to pay big bucks for software doesn't it.

I needed to defragment a Windows XP PC that had not been defragmented in 2 or more years.  There were files everywhere.  Windows defragment failed to move any of the red bits.  So I tried DIRMS just to see what would happen.

To my surprise DIRMS scanned the drive and started displaying information to the console.  There were files with over 200 fragments that it managed to consolidate into 16 or so chunks.  As you can imagine, this freed up a lot of space meaning that other files could be reduced in fragments too.  The files were also moved to the front of the drive or where the space would be best used.  Within 20 minutes all of the fragmented files had been consolidated.  Windows defrag didn't display any red bits when I checked.

DIRMS has a whole bunch more command line options than the Windows defrag tool.  There are options for a quick defrag, moving files to the front of the drive, moving files and sorting them alphabetically and many more.  By far the simplest command is the one to defragment the C: drive.

DIRMS C

For a free tool, this is certainly one that I carry around with me now. DIRMS also works on file servers.

The authors of DIRMS have also produced another tool called Buzzsaw.  This tool actively monitors files that are stored to disk, the service will scan the file to see how many fragments the file is stored in, and then when the system is idol, it will defragment the file if needed.

You can get DIRMS and Buzzsaw completely free from www.dirms.com.