Windows Vista tip of the week: Looking anew at Vista's Disk Defragmenter

OK, this may not seem like a big deal, but Microsoft has changed the Disk Defragmenter utility in Windows Vista with Service Pack 1 (SP1). In the original shipping version of Windows Vista, the Disk Defragmenter (as described in this Feature Focus article) was completely automatic: It would defrag all of your partitions, every night, starting at 1:00 am. This seemed like a great idea to me, but apparently some users complained that they’d prefer to have the ability to choose which partitions were defragged. That ability was added with SP1. Here’s what it looks like now:

So, if you haven’t ever looked at Disk Defragmenter in Windows Vista, do so now (Start Search, "defrag") and make sure it’s set up to automatically defrag your disks. If you have looked at, but have installed SP1, make sure you’re defragging only those disks you wan to defrag.

Discuss this Article 7

johnbaxter
on Jul 28, 2008
One wonders why OneCare insists on defragmenting at each tune up if Vista is set to do the job automatically and daily. It's probably those left and right hands again. I found program set to defragment both C: and the Sony Recovery partition (Vaio laptop). The latter never changes, so it shouldn't need a lot of defrag attention. It's definitely worth taking a look if you run Vista SP1.
Xrayjames
on Jul 28, 2008
Thanks for posting about this Paul...this was one feature of SP1 that I missed! Pingback: http://windowstalkblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/vistas-defragmenter-under-sp...
Waethorn
on Jul 28, 2008
"One wonders why OneCare insists on defragmenting at each tune up if Vista is set to do the job automatically and daily." Vista only defrags after analyzing the volume first. If the percentage is within fragmentation tolerance thresholds, a defrag won't run. OneCare does a full defrag regardless of the current fragmentation state.
mikegalos@msn.com
on Jul 28, 2008
@johnbaxter OneCare is optimized with the goal of making things as simple and certain as possible. If the Icon is Green - Life is good. Not If the Icon is Green - Life is probably OK within reasonable tolerances that you might want to tweak to optimize your use of background services during time you aren't using the computer. For the target audience the extra time taken overnight every so often is the best choice. It means they're sure their system is optimized without worrying about it. What's the downside? Perhaps a minor defrag at night when they're asleep that may have only been useful rather than critical? Not a choice they'd care about.
johnbaxter
on Jul 28, 2008
My Vista machine is a laptop which isn't on overnight. For that matter, it's often not on during the day. (The upcoming additional Vista "machine" will be running under Bootcamp on my iMac, and will likely be started about as often.) So, obviously my needs aren't mainstream, and I'll have to tame things as well as I can. Thanks for the information--it's clear that indeed there are reasons for the seeming oddity.
mikegalos@msn.com
on Jul 29, 2008
@johnbaxter Exactly. In this case, you are not the target audience so the program's defaults are really not tuned for you. The key is that OneCare is tuned for people who don't know how to change settings, get intimidated by settings or just "want it to work" right out of the box. That isn't you, obviously, so for you there are settings available to change the defaults. And if you do need help in tuning things, remember there's free email, phone and chat help available.
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