Dave,I wanted the benefit of the name option though, consolidate just packs everything in without sorting the files alphabetically. A lot of games read in their resource files in sequential order and it makes sense to have it done by name I think.

Does anyone know if O & O Defrag will let you specify where the files are written onto the disk? This may be just an Ultimate Defrag option.

I thought you could but not positive on that...

I think UD is the only one that actively lets you place files at a specific location. I know Perfect Disk doesn't. I can't really say if I'm seeing much of a tangible difference from doing this vs. Perfect Disk though. It's on the order of milliseconds if there's any difference.

Ryan, I have written to U.D. about this thread inviting their comments and help for you?Hopefully, they will reply shortly. My mail has been acknowledged. ;-)

Dave,Thanks a lot!

For what it's worth, I've been using UD for about 12 months and have had no issue with it. Mind you I use XP not Vista but my below par system found an extra 10-20 FPS after using it. I recommend always updating to the latest version (happens about every couple of months) and doing as Al says, select 100%. Make sure to use it regularly and particularly after installing or removing software. Remember the Consolidate option can take many hours to complete depending on your hard drives size and mess!! I have two hard drives with UD setup with different options on each one.I simply followed the tutorial for optimising UD for a Flight Sim PC and it did the trick. I haven't used any other third party defragger so can't comment on comparisons.Kenhttp://www.kennair.comhttp://www.kennair.com/Images/avatars/b200pil.jpg

Just to add my 2 cents, I used UD with XP and it worked fine. Just changed over to Vista Home Premium and UD doesn't work well. It seems to fragment instead of defrag the drive. I started out with 19% fragmentation and after an hour of "defragging" UD reported the degree of fragmentation to be 27%. I ran the program again and got essentially the same results. I defragged with another defrag program and it showed 0% fragmentation after it ran. I emailed UD about this problem.

I have exactly the same problem, after defragging and following the instructions above, I end up with 38% defragged files. I also have Vista.

Try un-checking "respect layout.ini" and see if that changes anything.

I am trying that right now. Are there any other good defrag programs out there which you guys can recommend?

Just finished the defrag with UD and I am still at 37%. Not good.

I have been using O&O defrag for years through various versions, have a look at:http://www.oo-software.com/home/en/products/oodefrag/I have found this product VG and useful.

I use O&O for some years now (Excellent) but thought I would try UD as I read so much about it. Using Vista 64-BIT O/S ... defrag perfectly with O&O but using UD it always left 30 odd percent not defrag. I'm not using the Computer with the official answer from UD on, so rely on memory 'till I can access the exact wording but the Vista Restore files (Shadow copies?) are unable to be defrag by UD. I returned to using O&O.Ray

It works fine for me I just put FSX, windows on the outer fast area.. However it seems to take an age sometimes reporting 151hrs to complete !!??