Looking to pick up a thrid-party defragging tool, ad it seems that these 3 are the most "talked about" options.Which one is most recommended? Pros/Cons/Opionions/Comments?Thanks!

Perfectdisk everytime, no question.You can defrag offline, so your pagefile gets defragged (made a significant difference to my machine), consolidate free space, so all your data is in one big block.I have PD on all my Windows machines, and i love it.Essential stuff.

O&O Defrag x64 edition version 11. I believe it is a very efficient defragnmentation utility. It has 5 defrag options and it can defrag on the background so when you install new prorams they are auto- defraged.

O&O Defrag x64 edition version 11. I believe it is a very efficient defragnmentation utility. It has 5 defrag options and it can defrag on the background so when you install new prorams they are auto- defraged.

Does it let you choose which folders to sort by name and push to the outer part of the disk platter? This is necessary if you want to get FSX's files into the fastest bit of the hard disk, sorted in optimal sequence. Looking at O&O's online documents, I can see that they let you sort the WHOLE hard disk into name order: but that is not quite the same thing as sorting particular folders into name order, or pushing particular folders to the outer (fastest) bit of the disk. I have a feeling that O&O took this feature out of more recent versions: isn't there something about it in Nick_N's tuning guide?I could well be wrong but I THINK the only product which still supports this under Vista/Windows 7 RC, is Ultimate Defrag 2008. I bought this a while ago. It's got a stupid user interface which makes it look like a toy. But under the bonnet it's got quite a lot of oomph.Like most of these low marginal value tools, you can download it for a free trial and see what you think. Just Google for Ultimate Defrag: it's made by Disktrix. Make sure you run it as "Administrator" if you use Vista/ Windows 7 RC.Please note, I'm NOT making a recommendation as there are 2 points to note about it. First, it stopped working on my last installation of Vista for some reason and the product "support" just gave up once they'd run through their stock responses. In fairness, however, it's working fine following a fresh installation. Secondly, I'm not sure whether the 64-bit version supports offline defragmentation yet: personally I wouldn't bother about this, but for some people it would be a show-stopper.Tim

Does it let you choose which folders to sort by name and push to the outer part of the disk platter? This is necessary if you want to get FSX's files into the fastest bit of the hard disk, sorted in optimal sequence. Looking at O&O's online documents, I can see that they let you sort the WHOLE hard disk into name order: but that is not quite the same thing as sorting particular folders into name order, or pushing particular folders to the outer (fastest) bit of the disk. I have a feeling that O&O took this feature out of more recent versions: isn't there something about it in Nick_N's tuning guide?I could well be wrong but I THINK the only product which still supports this under Vista/Windows 7 RC, is Ultimate Defrag 2008. I bought this a while ago. It's got a stupid user interface which makes it look like a toy. But under the bonnet it's got quite a lot of oomph.Like most of these low marginal value tools, you can download it for a free trial and see what you think. Just Google for Ultimate Defrag: it's made by Disktrix. Make sure you run it as "Administrator" if you use Vista/ Windows 7 RC.Please note, I'm NOT making a recommendation as there are 2 points to note about it. First, it stopped working on my last installation of Vista for some reason and the product "support" just gave up once they'd run through their stock responses. In fairness, however, it's working fine following a fresh installation. Secondly, I'm not sure whether the 64-bit version supports offline defragmentation yet: personally I wouldn't bother about this, but for some people it would be a show-stopper.Tim

No. It doesn't. You are right.But it's the only one commercial product(albeit there are some freeware 64bit defrag utils) that supports native 64bit operation. i.e. it's not a 32bit app. It is a native 64bit which means it will not run in 32bit mod on a 64bit OS. But if you are using a 32bit OS then Ultimate defrag or another util should be ok. Of course there is a 32bit version of O&O as well. AFAIK NTFS is 32bit File System in both 64 and 32 bit Windows OSs.

O&O Defrag (used correctly) is the product I useMoving folders to the edge of the platter and files UD or the user selects as low priority away from the edge is totally unnecessary and as a matter of fact unless the user knows exactly what they are doing with UD they can actually make things worse.The name of the game is NAME DEFRAG of the file system which in the case of MSFS creates a 'partially' sequential read setup. MSFS is designed so as elements are needed their file names are generally in alphanumerical groups within the each directory accessed whereby a NAME defrag allows the files to be called in sets from those directories as needed. O&O also defrags the MFT into a sequential order therefore reducing the access time for MFT seek/readHowever.. O&O must be used correctly to accomplish the goal. People look at a defrag GUI after it completes and assumes the disk is defragmented.. its isn

Looking to pick up a thrid-party defragging tool, ad it seems that these 3 are the most "talked about" options.Which one is most recommended? Pros/Cons/Opionions/Comments?Thanks!

I use Perfect Disk and are happy with it.Can't comment about the others