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UltraDefrag Handbook
5.1.0
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Before any disk defragmentation we recommend to disable the Windows paging file. It expands RAM, but works much slower. So, its removing will take much bigger effect on system performance than the disk defragmentation. If more RAM is needed than physically installed, setting up additional RAM modules always gives the best result.
Then, if you'd like to keep some files close to the beginning of the disk because of the highest speed of this area, don't ask the disk defragmenter for this job: just repartition the disk and use the first partition to keep the most frequently accessed files while the second partition - for backups, videos, music and other stuff tolerant for a bit slower access.
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.
Optimization is reasonable when you have free space heavily fragmented on your system disk. To determine whether to run optimizer or not execute the analysis and look at the cluster map. If you see white space heavily scattered around the disk - it's time for an optimization. However, it isn't recommended to optimize disks too frequently. Run it once a year or so since it may take a lot of time.
And, once again, don't crave to defragment/optimize data files - music/video has no need to be continues on disk, other data files have tendency for temporary living on the disk.
Some Anti-virus programs allow to exclude processes from being monitored, if your Anti-virus program supports this, you can use it instead of disabling it completely. You may still encounter slower performance compared to running UltraDefrag at boot or in safe mode.
We recommend to exclude as much files as possible from defragmentation - this will dramatically decrease the defragmentation time. Temporary files and archives are usually rarely accessed and may be left fragmented without a noticeable system performance degradation.
The use of disk defragmentation is not recommended on flash memory or solid-state drives (SSD), as it may reduce the lifespan of the drive. As flash memory does not rely on physical movement to read the drive, random file access is much faster than a mechanical hard drive, so defragmentation is not necessary.
On the other hand, flash drives defragmentation increases their potential for recovery as mentioned in our forum.
Floppy drives defragmentation is not recommended, because it always reduces the lifespan of the floppies.
Freshly used drives can be defragmented immediately; any drive, which has been in use for a long time without maintenance, should be checked for consistency first:
You can process multiple disks simultaneously, but only if they are located on different hard-disks. Processing multiple disks located on the same physical hard-disk will increase processing time significantly.
Example:
You can start one UltraDefrag session to process disks C: and D: and a second separate session to process disks G: and H:
This will result in less time needed to process all four disks. If both hard-disks are occupied in a similar way the time will be reduced to about 50% compared to the time needed for all disks to be processed one after the other.
Highly fragmented disks will have to be defragmented several times until you will see an improvement.
To prevent the system from a situation where it is not possible to boot into Windows, it is best to turn off boot processing at the top of the boot-time-script. This is done with the boot-off command. The boot processing is still executed, but the next boot will not cause another run of the boot time interface.
Sometimes a fragmented USN journal can prevent UltraDefrag from consolidating free space. In such a case you can remove the USN journal by executing the fsutil command as shown below from an administrative command prompt. It is recommended to recreate the USN journal after the drive has been processed.
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