UltraDefrag is one of the best free alternative to windows default windows defragging tool, that can investigate, defrag and optimize your entire windows system hard disk as well as individual files and folders.
Defragging a hard drive is nothing but making data easier to find to speed up your computer, A defrag tool will optimize available space on your hard disk by reorganization data or files into neat contiguous (adjacent) sections, which ultimately helps to boost the performance of your PC.
Although windows built-in disk defragment tool is efficient (particularly in windows 7 & 8), but using ultraderfag allows you to thoroughly re-organize data on hard disk with the help of numerous advanced options.
UltraDefrag 6 is a free and very powerful program that is designed to be fast and simple, it offers numerous advanced options such as boot scan and selective defraging.. e. t. c.
This disk defragmenter for Windows currently supports FAT, exFAT and NTFS file systems. By-default the software will not defrag removable flash devices based on solid-state memory, because defragging SSD will reduce those devices lifespan.
The key feature of this software is Boot Time Defragmentation, this mode that allows you to run this software at boot time in a manner similar to chkdsk. This is known as a native application. The primary goal of it is defragmentation of locked files. UltraDefrag runs at Windows boot before any file locking, so it can defragment almost everything, including page and hibernation files.
Features:
- Boot Time Defragmentation for system file processing
- Console interface for batch processing or setting up scheduled tasks
- Graphical user interface to follow the process visually
- Process single files, folders or drives from the Explorer context menu
- Specialized processing algorithms for each situation
- Available for both 32bit and 64bit Windows
- Optional dryrun to get a preview of the resulting disk usage
User Interface and Working :
The interface of ultradefrag is very simple, you can even run the tool from the command prompt or windows command line, to analyze your hard disk just launch CMD and type ” udefrag a”, you can find the CMD commands of the software through the developer site.
Now coming to Graphical Interface of the software, you can perform the actions either through the graphical icons on the toolbar or through commands or just clicking on the Action menu you will find list of functions you can perform.
Functions available in Action menu include: Analyze, Defragment , Quick optimization, Full optimization , Optimize MFT , Pause , Stop, Repeat action, Skip removable media, Rescan drives, Repair drives and When done. Below I listed a brief description about few functions
The optimize MFT function will optimize the master file table by placing its fragments as close to each other as possible. The quick optimization function will optimize the currently selected disks , constantly updates the cluster map and status bar, and generates a report. The process moves fragmented files to the back of the disk to free space at the front and moves them back to the front to concatenate them.
Where as Full optimization function will process moves fragmented and regular files to the back of the disk to free space at the front and moves them back to the front to concatenate them.
The repair drives function will run the CHKDSK against the selected drives to clear the status Disk needs to be repaired if possible. You need to rescan the drives afterwards to update their status.
When done function allows you to select an action that will be executed after all operations have been performed. The default is None, available actions are: Exit, Standby, Hibernate, Logoff, Reboot and Shutdown.
Working:
On launching the app you will find the list of the drives available for defragmenation, it will show information including drive name, file system and percentage of free space.If a driver icon is crossed out, select it and choose ‘Repair drives’ from the action menu.
In order to analyze your hard drive, double-click a drive or select the drive (partition) and click the magnifying-glass icon on the toolbar or press F5. To select more than one partition, use Ctrl button to select the partitions or drives.
The Analyse function will reveal the percentage of the drive that’s fragmented, the boxes in the cluster map will provide a visual representation of your hard drive. Blue squares indicate non-fragmented files, White represents free space and red boxes indicates fragmented files.
For defraging a partition(S), click the defragment icon or press F6, the process will start and continue for a few minutes to hours depending on your drive fragmentation. If you notice more red squares on the cluster map, this indicates the disk fragmentation time will be longer.
To pause this process you can either click the pause icon on the toolbar or hit the space button, to resume the process click the button once again.When defrag is done you can click the Report icon (a line page with a folded corner) on the toolbar to get a text summary of the results.However if you wish to abort or quit the defgrament process click the stop icon or type Ctrl+C from your keyboard.
For through defragmentation we recommend you to run a boot-time scan. On the main UI, go click on the settings option , go to ‘Boot time scan‘ and select enable.
The boot-time scan will allow the software to organize your files before other process is launched. But, make sure to disable it when the scan is completed otherwise it will run every time you start your system.
Ultradefrag will also optimize your hard drive, but this an extensive process which separates used fragments form free fragments to match them together and organize your drive better. You can either run quick optimise (Ctrl+F7) or full optimise (F7) function by clicking their icon, the optimiser will sort the files by path and in ascending order. As I said before as this is an extensive process, so it will take longer time than defragmentation.
Recommendations:
We recommend to Defragment your system disk only when you notice a system slowdown – approximately on a monthly basis, not frequently. Data drives have even less need to be defragmented, especially if they contain primarily music, pictures and videos.
Before any (initial) disk defragmentation we recommend to disable the Windows paging file. It expands RAM, but works much slower. To disable windows paging file, check this post.
Also we recommend to disable your antivirus software before using UltraDefrag, any virus scanner running during the defragmentation extremely slows down the process.
Conclusion:
UltraDefrag 7 is a powerful free and must have app on your PC, that is designed to be as simple and fast as possible. The software doesn’t use complex disk optimization strategies, because their use often noticeably increases the processing time.
The biggest advantages of UltraDefrag are an ability to defragment system files at boot time, nice graphical interface, handy reports and freeware. The main disadvantage is, it’s based on the Windows defragmenting interface that has a very ugly implementation.
Download : UltraDefrag 6.0.2 (32-bit)/ 64-bit
