Do you have any recommendations for a better disk defrag tool than the one supplied with Windows XP? However many times I run defrag, it still leaves fragmented files. Tony Mackie
The Disk Defragmenter in XP (in the System Tools folder) is as good as it needs to be. However, it is a somewhat limited version of Executive Software's Diskeeper, which gives you the chance to buy what is in effect an upgrade. You may find that what Disk Defragmenter shows as free space isn't really. When XP's NTFS (New Technology File System) installs its master file table, it grabs 12.5% of your hard drive for future expansion. This is usually called the "MFT Zone". If you fill the drive, NTFS will use this space to store your data, but when it needs more space for its index, it will have to store it somewhere else. A fragmented MFT can reduce performance, and Disk Defragmenter may not be able to defrag it. Moral: try to keep 10% of your drive space free.
Update: Dave English, a software and systems engineer adds that "the XP command line 'defrag -a -v c:' will report the number of MFT fragments. Apparently it can get it itself down to two." He uses a free SysInternals program called Contig to defragment individual large files, and says: "Apparently its PageDefrag will defragment system files such as the registry at boot time." See http://www.sysinternals.com/FileAndDiskUtilities.html.
