What Is It?

JKDefrag is a very popular and highly regarded disk defragmenting tool written by Jeroen Kessels. It provides a quick and simple way to defragment disks or anything that looks like a read/write disk to the Windows operating system.

Why Would You Want It?

Because it will speed up the time your PC takes to boot (start up) and programs will run more quickly, particularly if the system RAM is being fully used. (When the RAM is fully used by the OS and programs the remaining information has to be written to the hard drive which is very much slower).

Overall, hard drives are a relatively slow storage medium (memory) to read and write to. The process is slowed even further if the files are fragmented into many pieces in different places over the disk surface(s) The Windows operating system automatically writes data to the disks to available spaces (sectors) and apart from some special files does not try to make them into one single continuous file. This means that both the writing and reading processes need the read/write heads to move to find the data and of course the disk has to spin round for the relevant data to be under heads. Defragmenting can make the process far quicker by placing the data so it can be read more quickly and efficiently.

What Does It Do - The Essentials?

JKDefrag defragments the disk(s) while the system is running normally. However, some files cannot be defragmented due to restrictions of the operating system or the rights of the individual user. The JKDefrag website has plenty of information on defragmentation as well as tips on how to use and get the best out of the program. Tips include how to make the best use of your hard drives to maximise speed and how to ensure the maximum number of files are defragmented.

Summary:

• Defragments file on read/write disks
• Runs normally under the the operating system
• Uses the Microsoft API (so very safe in operation)

Pros: What’s Good?

• Freeware

• Portable
• Very Simple To Use
• Fast and Safe
• Comes in 3 versions - GUI, Command Line & Screensaver
• Lots of information on the JKDefrag website
• Source code available

Cons:What’s Not So Good?

• Scans all available disks which cannot be overridden in the GUI version
  (There are many reasons why you may not wish to defragment a disk, particularly flash memory devices)

More About What it Does in Detail:

Quote from the JKDefrag website:

JkDefrag is a disk defragmenter and optimizer for Windows 2000/2003/XP/Vista/X64. Completely automatic and very easy to use, fast, low overhead, with several optimization strategies, and can handle floppies, USB disks, memory sticks, and anything else that looks like a disk to Windows. Included are a Windows version, a commandline version (for scheduling by the task scheduler or for use from administrator scripts), a screensaver version, a DLL library (for use from programming languages), versions for Windows X64, and the complete sources.

General Use of JKDefrag

As the program is portable and provided in a zip file it must be run from explorer or by creating a shortcut (or use a launcher of some sort - See PortableApps Menu - Start All Your Portable Applications with 2 Clicks)

When the program is running it presents a colour coded drive map as well as information on the current defrag phase, percentage completion, drive and file.

(Click to enlarge)

Help

The help file is an a copy of the webpage with extensive information presented as a single html file in the download package.

What are the Technical Details & Compatibility?

What is the My Free Review Experience?

JKDefrag runs most everyday on my main PC and my laptop. I have it set to run at startup as this work well for the level of use of these computers. I personally prefer not to have defrag utilities that run in the background all the time as they use system resources, can slow access to hard drives and also may shorten the life of the drive by constant use. I rate this highly as:

Simple - Effective - Stable

What Could Make it be Better?

Ability to defrag pagefile etc.

More control of disks defragged

Scheduling

But - These are all available through a supporting GUI and the SysInternals PageDefrag utility which I will write about over the next two days.

What Other Posts are Relevant?

PortableApps Menu - Start All Your Portable Applications with 2 Clicks, Why You Want to Use Portable Freeware Applications, Lupo PenSuite - Massive Portable Application Suite

What are the Tags?

Technorati Tags: Freeware, PenDrive, Portable Freeware, Portable Application, PortableApps, Pro Reviewer, Programs, Software, Utilities, Windows, Windows XP

Popularity: 22% [?]

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 1st, 2008 at 9:57 am and is filed under Portable Freeware. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.