Using Other Third-Party Boot Defrag Programs

The built-in boot defragmenter is pretty good. However, a number of third-party defrag utilities think they can do it better. To name a couple, Diskeeper, O&O Defrag, and PerfectDisk all offer boot defragmentation support. Third-party defrag utilities often use different defrag algorithms that they believe work best. For the next section, use Diskeeper and PerfectDisk to run a boot defrag.

Boot-Time System Defrag with Diskeeper 2009

To defragment system files, and other files that are normally in use, the defragmentation must be run during the early stages of system boot. This will allow the defrag program to have full access to all files so that it can place them together on the disk. One program that allows this to be done is called Diskeeper, which was developed by Executive Software. A trial copy of Diskeeper 2009 can be found on Executive Software's web site (www.Diskeeper.com). If you have not already installed Diskeeper, do so now before proceeding any further. Any edition of Diskeeper 2009 will work fine. After you have it downloaded and installed, follow these steps:

1. Click the Start button, type Diskeeper, and press Enter.
2. When Diskeeper 2009 loads, click Action, expand Volume Properties, and select Boot-Time Defragmentation.
3. Boot-Time Defrag Properties will now load. Select the drive where your OS is installed, usually C:. You can also select multiple drives by holding down Ctrl and clicking them. This is useful if you may have applications that are stored on a drive different than where your OS is stored.
4. Under the Boot Time Defragmentation section, select Enable boottime defragmentation to run on the selected volumes.
5. Check Defragment the Master File Table (MFT), too.
6. Press OK and reboot your computer.

When you reboot your computer, you will notice that instead of loading into Windows all the way, Diskeeper will run in a pre-Windows environment so that it can have full access to your disks before any system files load. Depending on the size of your hard drive, the defragmentation process can take hours. It is best to do a boot-time defrag overnight.

Boot-Time System Defrag with PerfectDisk 10

PerfectDisk by Raxco Software is another very popular third-party defrag utility. Similar to Diskeeper it allows you to run a defrag before Windows boots up so the utility has full access to all your system files. To get started, visit www.PerfectDisk.com and download the trial version of PerfectDisk 10 Pro. After you have it installed, follow these steps to perform a boot defrag:

1. Start up PerfectDisk by clicking the Start button, typing in PerfectDisk, and hitting Enter.
2. When loaded, select your C: drive and then click System Files.
3. Click Yes on the "Offline defrag of your System Files could not run on drive C:\ because the drive is in use by another process. Do you want to force all open handles closed?" message box.
4. Click Yes on the "System files on the drive C:\ can only be defragmented at boot time. Would you like to defragment these files during the next reboot of your system?" message box.
5. You will now have the option to reboot your system. Click Yes followed by Reboot Now on the following screen.

After your computer restarts it will launch the PerfectDisk defrag utility in a pre-window environment and defrag your system boot files. When completed it will reboot again and return to the normal Windows environment.