The new UI for Vista defrag does 2 things: it allows users to see that
defrag is scheduled to run by default as a scheduled task; and it allows
users to run a "defragment now" to force defragmentation off-schedule.
The Vista defrag does NOT do 2 things: it does not defragment free space.
It is a fragmented file defragger only. The stripped down version of defrag
(which is apparently still licensed from Diskeeper) is a lame, "free" copy.
If you want to truly defragment your Windows drives, you need to purchase a
third-party product, like Diskeeper or Perfect Disk. That way you will
improve your system performance by both defragmenting and consolidating file
fragments and defragmenting and consolidating free space (not to mention
metadata and the pagefile). This is unchanged from XP.
But it also does not show the Windows user anything about its progress. No
indication of progress is analogous to no progress, and Windows interface
designers know this. In fact they repeatedly emphasized this fact in an
obscure book on designing the Windows interface from several years ago ( I
think it was called Designing Windows or something like that). That book
emphasized the importance of providing the user experience with continuous
visual feedback about interactive processes. So, it's not about the
accuracy of defrag's colorful little grid, which, as we all know, was never
accurate. Nor about the buzz you could get aimlessly watching the progress
as defrag ground through all the sector representations. It's about knowing
that the process is simply not infinitely hung in a silly loop and that you
might as well reboot, because the thing is just never going to finish.
With the Vista defrag, Microsoft has abandoned a core principle in the
design of an expressive GUI: let the user know that SOMETHING is happening
and that you can look forward to a point in time at which the process will
actually let you know it's finished.
The everyday Windows user will never run Windows Disk Defragmenter, so the
Task Scheduler is pre-programmed to take care of, at least, some file
fragmentation. The rest of us can go buy something that helps system
performance for real. Clearly, disk defragmentation is of significantly
less importance to Microsoft than playing MP3 files.
NOTE: Diskeeper has just announced its next generation defragger. The
description on their web site sounds enticingly similar to the moderators'
and the Microsoft blogs' descriptions of Visat defrag. Go figure!
-- Dave
