I’ve heard that Windows' defrag utility seldom does an effective job because if there’s other stuff running in the background while defrag is doing its thing, it may have to backtrack or may not even complete. If there’s any truth to this, then why isn’t there a defrag program that is self-booting and doesn’t depend on Windows being up?

Best to do that in Windows Safe-Mode. No programs running in the background. Also -- Delete all files in the Prefetch folder. C:\WINDOWS\Prefetch The Prefetch folder is quite large. I have deleted all files there, even Layout.ini, at times without problems. It will rebuild itself over time.

I use Diskeeper 10 Pro and it will keep on defragging even when a screensaver is running. It will also do a Boot Time Defrag . The latest version has even more tubes and wires and bells and whistle to make your life even easier...

I use Dirms with Buzzsaw. http://www.download.com/3000-2094-1... http://www.dlugosz.com/tools/dirms/... This one is also very good. Defraggler http://www.softpedia.com/get/System... http://www.defraggler.com/ http://defraggler.com/

i hope i will never be that desperate to use a defragmentation tools as means to make my life easier :) my vote goes to sysinternal's command line defragmenter Contig ... simply the best, if you don't like the typing stuff, get the Powerdefragmenter GUI add on. goes without saying it's all free.

In my experience the best defrag utility for Windows, especially (ugh) Vista, is Diskeeper 2008. It's fast, uses barely any resources when running and even has a shadow copy compatible mode for Vista. It takes just a couple of minutes to set up and then you don't ever have to worry about defragging.