What’s This All About?

Normally, you start the defragmenter utility by going to your “Start” menu and navigating from there. Obviously, this might be inconvenient for you if you need to defragment frequently. You could have multiple hard drives or a RAID configuration. There are a number of different reasons why you would want a context menu for defragmenting hard drive when you right-click on one.

I conducted a small survey of computer users who neglect drive defragmentation. Why?

More than half of those people said that they’d prefer the utility to be more reachable. So, I came up with an answer for that. The following is a tutorial that teaches you how to put a context menu when right-clicking your drive that lets you defragment it:

1. Access the “Run” dialog on your computer by pressing “Start + R” on your keyboard.

2. Type “regedit” and press “Enter.”

3. Navigate to “HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive\Shell“. It’s going to be tough to sift through all that if you have as much junk on your computer as I do. Here’s where we are so far:

4. Right-click on “shell”, click “New” and click “Key.” Label it “runas“. Your “shell” key should look like this, expanded

5. Right-click the “(Default)” key and click “Modify”. Write “Defragment” under “value data.” Click “OK”.

6. Right-click on an empty space in the right side of the screen, navigate to “New”, and click “String value”. Name it “Extended”, but don’t give it a value.

7. Create a new key under “runas” just like how you created one in “shell”. Name it “command”. Here’s where we are so far:

8. Now, we’re going to edit the command subkey, so select it. Edit the “(Default)” key value to:

defrag %1 -v

You’re done! Here’s how your final product should look like.

Now, you need to restart your computer before the changes take place. Once restarted, you should see a context menu for defragmenting your hard drive when you right-click on it. Please note that you shouldn’t be editing your registry if you have no experience in doing it previously. It’s a rather meticulous library your operating system relies on, and if you mess something up by accident, your computer won’t forgive you easily. Try backing up the registry before you try any modifications, regardless of your previous experience.

To fix this fragmentation problem, we need to run the disk defragmentation application where it locates the various parts of a file and arranges them in running order. By default, Windows comes with its own set of defragment tool that anyone can use, but it suffers from some drawbacks such as inability to defragment a single selected file and ignores files that are smaller than 64 MB.

On the other hand, there is this effective utility named Auslogics Disk Defrag which lets you overcome all of this drawbacks. This useful Auslogics product comes with features like:

• able to defragment all drives at once.
• able to defragment a single file or folder.
• auto defragmentation in the background.
• wipes out all the free space so that no data can be restored.
• able to change the algorithm of defragmentation.
• schedule regular defragmentation session.
• compatible with Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7.

It also contains several advanced features like optimizing your hard drives for maximum performance and keeping the MFT feature zone clear.

How to use Auslogics Disk Defrag

One good thing about Auslogics Disk Defrag is that it is easy to use.

If you want to defragment a single or multiple drives simultaneously, simply select the drives you want to defragment and click on “Defrag” button.

Clicking on the arrow beside the Defrag button allows you to change the algorithm of the defragmentation process. Here you can chose to just analyze the disks or to defragment the selected drives. You can also chose “Defrag & Optimize” option where it tweak the system for best performance. This process is slower but more effective than just the “Defrag” method.

If you just want to defragment some specific files or folders, go to Action->Defrag File or Action->Defrag folder. You can then select the file or folder to defrag.

Another interesting feature about this software is that you can set the algorithm of the defragment process. One option is to remove the users’ temporary file before defragmentation. This can significantly reduce the defragmentation time. You can also set option not to defrag files bigger than a certain size. Moving the system file to the beginning of the disk can also help to increase your system speed.

You can also schedule the defragmentation process from the “Schedule” tab.

Auslogics Disk Defrag is free to download and use. For those who wanted more powerful software, you can also try the premium version – Auslogics BoostSpeed.

Does this software make your defragmentation process a whole lot easier? Hopefully your PC performs faster too.

Needless to say, the windows registry tends to be in a mess most of the time.

As a Windows user, you also might have noticed Windows becoming progressively slower as you use it, installing and removing software, going about your daily business. One of the reasons for this is because the Windows registry tends to get bloated with stale entries and such, over time and since it is stored in the memory as long as the computer is being used, it slows down the whole computer.

There are a lot of utilities available to help you clean up the registry and most of them do the job pretty well. One of them that I tried recently (and was pretty impressed with) is Auslogics’ Registry Defrag.

Registry Defrag is a no nonsense, no frills application. Download and install it from the above link and you’re all set (almost).

When run Registry Defrag for the first time, it reads the registry, analyses it and tells you the approximate gains that you’ll get by running the utility.

Once you click on Defrag, Registry Defrag schedules the defrag to take place on the next reboot of Windows. It’ll ask you to let it reboot windows, so that it can work on the registry, without Windows bothering it. Or you can keep working and reboot later at your convenience.

If you’re the kind of user who installs and removes a lot of software and are convinced that reinstalling Windows is the only way to remove the crud, try giving Registry Defrag a try.

Defragmenting is the process of reading all the bits on the file system and re-arranging them to be contiguous.

This is a pretty time intensive process and is quite complex for an operating system to handle. Imagine, you’re trying to access a file that you know resides on particular place and the next time you go to access the same file, the file’s position has changed, since the user ran a defragmenting utility over the file system.

For this reason, the default defrag utility which comes bundled with windows (defrag.exe) does not even attempt to defrag any of the important system files that windows uses. So, even after a long and lengthy defragmenting session, there is a good chance that your computer is still not running as well as it can.

To get over this problem, the kind souls maintaining the sysinternals tools over at Microsoft Technet have released a nifty little utility called PageDefrag.

Using PageDefrag to defrag system files on Windows is pretty simple. Just extract the pagedfrg.exe application from the zip file that you downloaded from the above link and execute it.

This is what you will see.

Select the “Defragment at next boot” option, press “OK” and reboot windows.

When Windows starts to load, PageDefrag will automatically run and do its job, which is defragmenting the system files, and then complete loading windows after its done.

How PageDefrag gets over Windows inability to defrag system files is that it sets itself to run even before Windows has started and so accesses those files before Windows gets to claim any control over them. Isn’t that cool ?

In my case, none of the system files needed defragmentation and so the process was over in just under 5 seconds but if you have not reinstalled Windows in some time, defragmentation can take a long time. Factor in at least 15-20 minutes for the job.

Enter Defraggler, a powerful and easy-to-use defragmentation tool for your Windows managed hard drives.  This defrag tool really sets itself apart from it’s competitors by being a quality product with the perfect price tag – free.  This tutorial will give you a nice overview of the Defraggler tool, as well as provide you with the necessary knowledge to use it effectively on your home computer.

First off, lets get to the meat and potatoes.  Why do you need to defrag?  Simply put, your Windows file system frequently fragments it’s file system by placing pieces of each file that it writes to disk into the first available spots.

The result is an increase in the time it takes to access a file, because the file can be cut into pieces and spread about the physical disk.  By defragging your disks, files are relocated so that all of the pieces are in the correct order and placed next to one another.  Defragging can easily extend the live or your hard disks and improve system performance.

Install Defraggler

You can get started by downloading and installing the latest edition of Defraggler.  I won’t bore you with the details of the installation, because it is incredibly straight forward.  I strongly encourage you to keep all of the default settings when you install the application, it will make things a whole lot easier.

Launch Defraggler

You can launch Defraggler from the desktop icon or the Start Menu.  Once open, you’ll be presented with the main window, as shown below.

Analyze

As you can see, it’s very straight-forward.  Start by selecting the disk you want to perform maintenance on in the upper portion of the window.  Next, click the Analyze button to have Defraggler assess the current condition of the file system on the selected drive.

This shouldn’t take very long to process.  Once complete, you’ll see a report similar to the following screenshot.

Defrag

You can click the View Files button, if you are interested in seeing which files are actually strewn about the drive.  That step is only for interest sake and has no impact on the defrag process.  To start the process, click on the Defrag button.

Depending on the size of your drive, the amount stored on it, and the amount of time since the last defrag, this process could take a considerable amount of time to complete.  It’s also resource intensive, so don’t start this task while you have a lot of work to do.

Save it for when you might have some downtime and can afford to be away from the computer for an hour or more.  Mine didn’t take very long to complete, only about 15 – 20 minutes.  Here’s a sample of the report you can expect to see once the job is done.

That’s it.  Pretty simple stuff.

You should repeat this process for each drive on your system.  You can even defragment your portable USB drives.  Even though you have done a great service for your PC, you’re not done yet.  Performing a defrag is a great step in the right direction, but to properly manage your system you need to defrag on a regular basis.  Defraggler can help!

Scheduled Maintenance

Clicking on the Settings menu, then Options, will open up the main Options dialog box.  Click the Schedule tab to set up a schedule that works for you.

Select the drive that you want to schedule maintenance for via the Drive dropdown list.  A good place to start is Local Disk (C:).  Next place a checkmark in the checkbox labelled Schedule defragmentation for chosen volume.  This will activate the lower options, allowing you to specify an interval.  This part is personal preference, but I prefer to defrag my drives on a weekly basis.  For most users, this will be acceptable.

Now you just have to pick a starting date and time.  Do yourself a favor and select a time when the system will not be in high demand from it’s user(s).  If you have more than one drive, repeat the process by selecting a different drive from the dropdown list and follow the steps you followed for the first drive.

As you can see in the pictures below, I staggered the days that my drives are defragmented, mainly because of the resource requirements to get the job done.

Just click Ok and your system will do the rest.

There are some advanced components that come with Defraggler and one of them is to check the drive for errors.  You can access this utility via the Action menu.

Checking for errors can take a significant amount of time.  In fact, I’ve seen it take a couple of hours to actually finish, so don’t start this task unless you have plenty of time to kill.

Summary

Defraggler is an important addition to your PC toolkit.  The benefits of learning to use this tool will definitely be seen through extended hard drive life and improved file access performance.  It’s easy to use, free to download, and you can set it and forget it.

If you run into any problems, Piriform provides a great support forum that represents a community of help resources.