In terms of Diskeeper though, I think it's hands down (sorry for this sounding like an ad. I'm not en employee but after this post, I wouldn't turn away a 2012 version license appearing in the mail.
).- set and forget; I dropped it on my gaming boot, gave it a manual defrag to get everything in order then checked in on it for about the first week due to novelty of it being the new installed toy. After that, I just forgot about it; nothing news worthy when I pop it open for a check, it just runs away in the background minimizing my game load times.
- "intelliwrite"; during the storage write function, it suggests where file blocks should be written together for best performance. Basically, once defragmented, the drive should remain so or very close to it regardless of how much read/write you do. No such functionality in Windows else we wouldn't need defrag outside of the filesystem native functions in the first place.
- instant defrag; it will quickly defragment single files in passing. My understanding - you read a file off the drive but don't write it back and defarg go "yeah, that can perform better if I defrag it now for you." Windows doesn't defrag single files; it's full drive or nothing.
- active defrag; ongoing full disk defrag based on available resources so when your not using the machine, it's being defragmented. You can set it to based this need on fragmentation or only fragmentation levels that affect performance. Windows defrag runs as a scheduled job which takes a crapton of resources while it runs (as do any other scheduled defrag utils I've looked at). Diskeeper is not going to colide with your backup process either. No worrying about your scheduled defrag colliding with your scheduled backup or any scheduled large data dumps.
- better positioning of files on the platter. You'll notice blocks being placed near the back or front of the drive based on frequency of use and whatever other variables it accounts for. Spaces are left applicably between files so if you write more data to the file, blocks can remain together. Last I used it, Windows defrag mostly shoves everything to the front of the drive all squished together as do other defrag utils.
- boot defrag; it manages the files locked after system bootup like your swap and hibernate. This again includes positioning them applicably (seems to often be near the middle of the drive). It also does your preboot files during this step to I believe.
- SSD; Windows Defrag ignores SSD where Diskeeper manages the write function to minimize future write cycles.
To be honest, I'm still undecided on the SSD benefit. They claim improved performance and life expectancy based on positioning during the write function. This apparently works along side the SSD's native wear leveling functions. I'll admit that SSD defrag may be more my own cosmetic preference.
They have a 45 day trial version which is worth the price of admission. I actually just finished it on a set of machines of various age, state and usage and am now on the post-trial watching how fast the dries fragment without it.
In short, Windows default defrag does not give you ongoing coverage, interact with SSD in a good way, positioning storage blocks as effectively, play nice with other storage intensive processes or operate without noticeable resource usage.
A last note; running MyDefrag on a nightly schedule is pretty hard on resources also. When I used to do so, the machine was noticeably slow for the first half hour of the day while the programs left open slowly recovered resources that the scheduled defrag had taken. Firefox was very noticeable.
