Ultra Defragmenter

For whatever reason--maybe just nostalgia--people are hooked on the old Windows defragmenter cluster map, with the little colored squares rearranging themselves into their unfragmented positions. Ultra Defragmenter brings this interface back, and although it definitely kicks it old school as far as the visuals are concerned, we're not sure it works much better than the built-in Windows defragmenter.

The program's interface is plain, displaying the list of volumes, the cluster map, a progress bar, and a handful of buttons. We had the program analyze our hard drive and then started defragmenting. The program seemed to take about as long as the built-in Windows defragmenter, if not a little longer; it wasn't terribly slow, but it didn't impress us with its speed, either. Once it was finished we opened the Windows defragmenter and analyzed our hard drive with that. Even though we'd just defragged with Ultra Defragmenter, the built-in utility showed that our drive was still 20 percent fragmented. We ran Ultra Defragmenter again, analyzed the drive, and found that the fragmentation was down to 19 percent. So although Ultra Defragmenter looks cool, it doesn't seem too terribly effective. The program does get points for having a thorough online Help file that explains all the ins and outs of both Ultra Defragmenter and the defrag process in general. Overall, Ultra Defragmenter isn't a terrible choice--especially if you really miss the cluster map--but it's probably not the best option if you want a really thorough defragmentation.

Ultra Defragmenter installs politely but leaves a folder behind upon removal. We recommend this program to everyone, provided that you don't mind form trumping function.