The disk defragmenter that Microsoft includes with Windows 2000 and XP really stinks up the place.
I’ve been playing with an alternative.It’s free. It’s called DIRMS, an acronym for Do It Right Microsoft.
It’s text mode. That means XP and NT owners can schedule defragments without paying for Diskeeper, which is good, because Diskeeper is barely better than MS’s defrag because they were written by the same company.
DIRMS uses the same built-in API so it ought to be safe but it uses a different algorithm. Whereas Executive’s programs won’t even try to defrag a file if it can’t do it completely, DIRMS just does the best it can. And unlike Diskeeper/Defrag, it moves files to the front of the disk, just like Win98’s Defrag, which increases performance further.
I’m not ready to put it on any system I care about yet, but I think it has a lot of potential. Rather than running Defrag four times to clean up a disk, I can run DIRMS followed by Defrag to mop up the operation and get a disk that’s almost 100% defragmented.
In fact the two programs seem to do better in tandem than either could ever do on their own. At any rate, it’s free, and worth checking out.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He started his career as a part-time computer technician in 1994, worked his way up to system administrator by 1997, and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He invests in real estate on the side and his hobbies include O gauge trains, baseball cards, and retro computers and video games. A University of Missouri graduate, he holds CISSP and Security+ certifications. He lives in St. Louis with his family.
Fortunately, inexpensive 120 GB drives mean Diskkeeper Lite (the free version) can do an adequate job. At least, it does for me.