Phazon88 I suppose it would depend of the number of HD's and their sizes and how much activity you have using them (just the ordinary home user or a power user or someone with a business)

I was using a free version from O&O Software, but they stopped offering it. I just recently switched to Auslogics Disk Defrag, it's another free program. It seems to do the job okay, but I'm just the ordinary home user. It may not suit your needs.   

i use Perfectdisk http://www.raxco.com/home_office/home_perfectdisk_professional.cfm
with 250Gb and 500Gb hard drives
Works fine
I heard Diskeeper works fine too but i first started with PerfectDisk and stay on

Yeah sorry I should've classified what kind of user I was. I'm a power user, who installs alot of games and deals with a fairly large amount of files.

I have half a terabyte of storage in total on my machine (in the form of 2 250GB HDs).

I dont think you can really go wrong with either Diskeeper or PerfectDisk. used both for years, although ive settled with PerfectDisk for now.

I have been using Diskeeper for about 8 Years now! I am not a power user & not a gamer! I love Diskeeper & update the software version every 2 years or so. It does the job for me very well! I like the set it and forget feature & sometimes I think it is not working so I run a diskcheck & my drive is perfectly defragged. I have been using it so long I can't judge any longer how it increases performance but it does do what I want a defragger to do!

I've used Diskeeper for years, its outstanding, never had a single issue with it. It will even sort out Network Servers etc etc - superb piece of software.

One example of many: I run Climate Models in the background on my PC from www.climateprediction.net ((good thing to get into for anyone in that kind of thing - see the Site). The models back off processor use when other things are going on, so you end up utilising otherwise unused capacity. The models use hundreds of small files, and fragmentation can be an issue - but with Diskeeper running in the background as well, its no hassle. Diskeeper recognises the modeling going on, and will back away from that as needed. I never really know its there. Brilliant.

So I end up running the modelng, Diskeeper, playing a full blown GalCiv game, the odd few "cntrl-esc" sessions back to desktop during GalCiv games running browsers/mail etc, so processor (AMD FX60 Dual Core) is used absolutely to the max - and not a single contention or hassle. If Diskeeper works through that lot, as it does, you cant ask for better. Superb piece of software that is extremely well supported.

All the features on it are well thought through, all provide value, and there is no "Fluff" about them, they are there for a purpose that gives real benefit, not Fluff to mesmerise the unwary - often the case with freebie ones where they do a good job but you "dont know what you dont know" and the additional features from this paid for version are absolutely 100% worth it.

Regards
Zy

I too changed to Perfect Disk but both are good, just that PerfectDisk is not as in your face and as expensive with new versions continuously and also faster with the on demand defragger.
Oh perfect disk allows 3 computers on one licence too I think.
I have large files on large disks that are part of disease prediction models according to many variables and so defragging is very important to keep everything running fast.

My main XP desktop has 4 drives, a total of 1.4 TB. Diskeeper pro 2008 keeps them in excellent shape with it's background defrag mod and I don't have to do anything! I really like Diskeeper's stability, very low resource usage, and useful features (and no useless frills), it has never given me any trouble either. so I would not switch to any other defragger, free or otherwise.

I think Diskeeper is a great package, but a couple of years ago I switched to O&O defrag, primarily because they supported Vista sonner and it is every bit as good or maybe even better. If you want to pay either is a good choice.

There are some good free ones out there as well, but after a lot of testing they don't quite do as thurough as job in general. Or they have fewer customizable scheduling features sometimes.

Another vote for Diskeeper 2008 from me. Among the automatic defraggers and other third party tools out there in the market, I liked DK the most. It does a great job with the real time background defrag. You can also turn off the feature. Like the interface too. Havent had any problems.

I tried Diskeeper and whilst I liked it I found PerfectDisk did a better job

i have been using diskkeeper in it various guises for many years, and have always found that it does an excellent job. count a vote for me