O&O Defrag 26 
Recommendations and FAQs

Defragment your system regularly!

Only defragmentation on a regular basis can ensure that you always get the best out of your system! Along with automatic defragmentation in the background, O&O Defrag offers you the option of scheduling defragmentation jobs that can be run whenever you decide.

Recommended use defragmentation plan

For constantly running gaming computers we recommend manual defragmentation. Only the gamer himself can decide when he can afford to lose system performance as a result of defragmentation. Alternatively, we recommend configuring the O&O ActivityMonitor so that an automatic defragmentation will not start while a game is running.

For a regular desktop PC, where mainly Internet or office applications are used, or even some games are played, we recommend keeping the default setup of O&O Defrag. Automatic defragmentation makes sure that your system is always running at its optimal performance level – without any effort on your part.

For office computers requiring average performance, the rule for for private desktop PCs should apply: We recommend keeping the default setup of O&O Defrag as it is.

With video editing or hard disk recording systems the data throughput of the disk subsystem plays a decisive role. In particular with hard disk recording systems, some unwanted failures might occur which can render an entire recording session useless. We recommend manual defragmentation of drives before and after a session. Please do not use automatic defragmentation. It could start analyzing your drives while you are working!

For Servers used heavily during the week or in daytime, we recommend a nightly job which runs an Optimize/Quick as well as a complete Optimize on the weekend.

Don’t wait too long before you defragment!

As soon as you’ve installed your operating system, the file system will begin to fragment. Avoid reduced performance right from the beginning and install O&O Defrag as quickly as possible! Only then can you be sure that your hard disks will access your files quickly. You will also avoid unnecessary wear and tear on your hardware due to increased movement of the read/write head.

Avoid moving large numbers of files during defragmentation

O&O Defrag will calculate the best position for your files before and during the defragmentation. If you copy, move or delete files, these calculations will have to be carried out again. This will take time and lengthen the defragmentation time.

Automatic defragmentation with the threshold tool

Along with automatic defragmentation in the background, O&O Defrag offers you the option of scheduling defragmentation jobs that can be run whenever you decide. You can shorten the duration of a defragmentation by specifying a border value for its execution. This means that defragmentation will only take place when a particular degree of fragmentation is reached. You can thereby avoid unnecessary defragmentation runs. In the job dialogue under Drives, just enter a degree of fragmentation, e.g., 5%, upon which the job should be run.

O&O Defrag on notebooks

The Power Management enables you to prevent defragmentation if your notebook is running on battery power. The length of your battery’s life will therefore not be affected and you won’t have to stop the defragmentation manually. O&O Defrag recognizes the switch between main and battery power and will run the defragmentation according to your own configuration. You can read more about this in the section Settings.

Continue working undisturbed while defragmenting

Particularly in the case of workstations or servers that are under pressure all the time, it is important that defragmentation take place in the background without negatively affecting the day-to-day running of the system. In such situations, we recommend you use O&O ActivityMonitor for keeping an eye on the resource usage and automatically adjusting the burden placed on your system by O&O Defrag.

Read next:

• Data Security and Integrity
• Conflicts with shadow copies during defragmentation
• O&O Defrag and Firewalls
• Free space needed for defragmentation
• Status notices and program output
• Why do the write access counters of my SSD increase during defragmentation with Solid / Quick and Solid / Complete?
• Why is the ClusterView different on HDDs and SSDs?