Fragmented HDDs become slow and inefficient in time. SSDs, though more efficient when it comes to deleting and moving “pages” of data, can use the occasional trimming to improve their overall performance.
Being honest, when it comes to defragmenting or trimming your internal and external drives, Smart Defrag does not offer much more than what your Windows OS offers. The trim command is constantly working for you in the background as soon as Windows detects an SSD in your computer, and HDD defragmentation can also be set to be somehow controlled by your operating system in real time. In any case, forcing defragmentation and trimming tasks occasionally is always a good idea. When that happens, Smart Defrag offers you a compact solution that is certainly much more attractive than the one available in Windows.
Smart Defrag can scan for fragmented files all your drives in a sequential way – all you need to do is tick those drives (both HDD and SSD) that you want the program to check for you. The interface is not only much nicer than the one provided by your OS, and it includes an interesting accessibility feature that may help color-challenged users to make the most of the default color map offered by Smart Defrag.
What you will not find in your Windows standard defragmentation tool is the game optimizer or the disk health checker that IObit’s tool includes also for free, and which are always nice to have at hand. Specially the Disk Health option, which will inform you regularly not only about the temperature, read and write speeds, and the response time of the selected drive, but also about the status of more specific disk-related issues that will surely be of interest to more savvy users.
As it is a completely free tool, I see no reason why you should not have Smart Defrag installed on your computer. If desired, it can monitor your disks at all times and make sure that your files and all other data suffer from the lowest defragmentation rates possible to keep your PC’s performance speed at the highest speed rate possible.
Pros
- Defrags and trims your disks at high speed
- Includes disk health parameters
- Offers an alternative color map for color-challenged users
- Has a game optimizer
Cons
- Does not differ much from Windows defrag and trim options in terms of functionality
If you have the free edition, this is a downgrade of Free SmartDefrag, to keep full option you need tu purchase, otherwise is better to go back to the old 4.0 and you have about everything.
This is such a useful tool, I am surprised it's free. Like Lit, I recommend it.
Smart Defrag 4 - I miss the Automatic Defrag screen that showed CPU usage, Disk Drive Usage & Defrag History graphs. Was useful - sorry it's gone in Version 4.