Smart Defrag Portable for Windows

A hard drive defragmenter, Smart Defrag Portable takes away the hassle of having to remember to periodically optimize your disks for best performance. This free app features an intelligent defrag mode where your PC will be defragmenting its hard drive whenever you're not using it.

Pros

Fast and functional: From the straightforward interface to the ability to install itself on a thumb drive, Smart Defrag Portable is a really sensible and intuitive app right from the start. When we tested its core functionality, we found that it's also fast -- it took less than 20 seconds to analyze our 60GB hard drive and detect a 1.74 percent fragmentation. The defragmentation process took a little over seven minutes to complete.

Automatic defragmentation: You can set up automatic defragmentations on a schedule or when your PC has been idle for a set number of minutes. A really powerful feature is the ability to pause the app automatically if the system load on the hard drive exceeds a certain level, and then resume once the disk is idle again.

Advanced defragmentation: Relying on a special defragmentation mode that takes place during the startup of your machine, this software can handle all the system files that cannot be defragmented in the normal way, because they're either protected or in current use.

Cons

Third-party ads: The app has an entire tab dedicated to promoting other utility apps and services, most of them paid. On the plus side, they are really well integrated into the program and look like a part of the interface. What's more, because they are placed in their own tab, you may never have to look at them.

Bottom Line

Smart Defrag Portable turns out to be a great alternative to the standard disk defragmenter that comes with Windows. If you're moving files in and out of your hard drive on a regular basis, you should try this app. But if your PC uses a Solid-State Drive (SSD), you won't be needing disk defragmenters.