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The UltraDefrag Handbook  5.0.0
Frequently Asked Questions

How frequently to defragment?

Defragment your system volume only when you notice system slowdown - approximately on a monthly basis, not frequently. Data drives have even less need to be defragmented, especially if they contain primarily music, pictures and videos.

Optimization is reasonable when you have free space heavily fragmented on your system volume. To determine whether to run optimizer or not execute the analysis and look at the cluster map. If you see white space heavily scattered around the disk - it's time for an optimization.

And, once again, don't crave to defrag/optimize data files - music/video has no need to be continues on disk, other files have tendency for temporary living on the disk.

After defragmentation I see my restore points disappeared, what happens?

This is a normal situation when restore points disappear after an intensive disk processing. Windows limits amount of disk space reserved for restore points. When you perform intensive disk processing, Windows tracks changes through system restore, therefore the mentioned limit may be easily exceeded which results in old restore points deletion.

We would recommend to avoid the use of restore points for serious purposes, because Windows can never guarantee that some point saved in the past will be available in the next moment. Use backup software instead, Windows already has such a program and there are also lots of 3-rd party programs of such kind.

Why configuration files editing is better than one settings window with tabs?

It is much easier and reliable to use the standard Notepad application to edit configuration files.

How can I disable the boot time defragmenter manually?

If something goes wrong and the boot-off script does not work properly, remove the defrag_native entry from the following system registry parameter manually:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\BootExecute

How many differences are between the Ultra Defragmenter and well known MyDefrag (previously JkDefrag) application?

Both programs have similar volume analysis algorithms, but defragmentation is done in different ways. While MyDefrag tends to give more control over a files placement, UltraDefrag is designed to be as simple and fast as possible. So, UltraDefrag never uses a complex volume optimization strategies, because their use often noticeable increases the processing time.

The biggest advantages of UltraDefrag are an ability to defragment system files at boot time, nice graphical interface, handy reports and instant availability of sources licensed under GPL.

The main disadvantage of both applications (UltraDefrag and MyDefrag) is that they are based on the Windows defragmenting interface that has a very ugly implementation. We cannot change this, because it is part of the filesystem drivers (ntfs.sys, fastfat.sys), which are too complex and not open source to modify or replace them.

Why does the progress bar update irregularly?

The progress bar measures disk space, not the number of files. So when few big files are analyzed, the progress bar will increase very fast. Conversely, when thousands of small files are analyzed, progress will be relatively slow.

Why is the volume name not displayed?

Explorer replaces an empty volume name by Local Disk or similar, UltraDefrag does not replace an empty volume name with any default.

Where can I find a legend of the cluster map colors?

The colors are described in the Cluster Map section of the Graphical Interface page.

Why is only the last report displayed, if I choose to display multiple reports?

Browsers which do not support tabbed browsing are reusing the same window. This is a limitation of the way a HTML page is opened from within Explorer.

Why are multiple windows opened, if I choose to display multiple reports?

If your browser supports tabbed browsing open one instance of your default browser before you display the reports. This will open each report in a new tab depending on your browsers configuration.

Why is the progress exceeding 100%, when processing FAT volumes?

On FAT volumes space is immediately released after a file is moved, so it happens, that more files can be fully defragmented, than initially calculated.

How can I process all volumes except a few?

You can use the filter variables to do this. For instance you like to defragment all fixed drives except C and S.
To achieve this you use set UD_EX_FILTER=C:\;S:\ and execute udefrag --all-fixed.
The analysis will be executed for any drive, but defragmentation will be skipped for drive C and S.
The analysis will not be complete for excluded FAT volumes, because the driver does only check the root folder of excluded volumes.

I have set UD_LOG_FILE_PATH or log_file_path, but the log file is not created?

If creating the log file fails for any reason, UltraDefrag tries to create the log file in the temporary folder of the current user.
Only if creating the log file in the temporary fails too, there will be no log file created.
The default temporary location for the GUI and console edition is: %TMP%\UltraDefrag_Logs\{filename}
The default temporary location for boot time defrag is: %SystemRoot%\UltraDefrag_Logs\{filename}
The file name is the one from the specified log file path variable.


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