Windows defragmenter vs Third-party defragmenter

What is the difference between Windows defragmenter vs Third-party defragmeneter?

The real, honest truth: Nothing.

Third-party defragmenters don't defragment on their own - they use Windows' built-in defragmentation capability.

In addition: Modern hard drives simply do not require additional defragmentation beyond what Windows 10 does on its own.

In the past, I used to defragment my hard drives regularly, but I haven't had the need to do that for many years. Not since I learned about the technology built in to modern drives. 

Third-party defragmenters still exist, of course, and they are marketed to people who don't know better.

If you run a third-party defragmenter on a HDD, you won't do any harm to your computer. You won't accomplish anything either, other than wasting time. If you try to run a third-party defragmenter on a SSD, you will gradually reduce the service life of the SSD.

There is no benefit to using two defragmenting tools, and doing so can actually be counterproductive as they use different algorithms.

This may be why you see a bunch of 'fragments' after running the second tool.

In some ways the more important part of defragmenting an HDD is the process of moving files to make them more contiguous

(ADA - optimisation) as this reduces the possibility of HDD 'thrashing' due to the larger movements required that can occur when

files are spread over the platter.

This part of the procedure is what can take a very long time if a drive has not been defraged for a long time because auto maintenance

has been disabled. Removal of fragments is generally fairly quick.

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That's fine. What matters is the quality of the Windows install.

Also an SSD is the best upgrade you can give your PC - lightning fast, better than a new higher end PC without one.

You don't even have to defrag or maintain it. Just the gold standard install, nothing more or less.

Hey Blue. I'm Greg, an installation specialist, 10 year Windows MVP, and Volunteer Guardian Moderator here to help you.

Windows defragmenter is as good as any. In previous editions we used 3rd party defraggers, cleaners and other tools but Windows has evolved now to where it's built in Maintenance which runs in the background is sufficient.

What we have found is that in Windows 10 everything depends on the quality of the underlying install, the same reason enthusiasts have never run Factory or Upgrade installs because they know there would be endless issues.

For example there have been zero return problems by those who follow the gold standard Clean Install here: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wiki.... It is better and faster than any previous version of Windows, and a better install than any amount of money could buy. So when you get time I'd study over that to see if it's something I can help you do.

I hope this helps. Feel free to ask back any questions and keep me posted. If you will wait to rate my post, I will keep working with you until it's resolved.

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