With defrag running regularly, the system will be close to optimal levels of fragmentation, and subsequent defrag runs should not take long. Also, the idea behind the new automated defrag is that users will not have to think about it not worry about the progress it is making. While I agree that having no progress is bad, misleading progress I believe is worse. The difficulty here is that since defrag is a multi-pass process (multiple iterations of file defragmentation and free space consolidation) there is no way to accurately predict when defrag will complete since the number of loop iterations and how long each takes are highly dependent on the layout of the files on the volume, the level of file and free space fragmentation, and the other system activity. Depending on the phase of defrag, 1% of progress could take from several seconds to minutes, which made the progress indicator highly unreliable. Part of the problem with the Windows XP defrag tool was that percent complete was not accurate or meaningful. Why was the defrag progress indicator removed? If you really want to keep a close eye on fragmentation, I'd recommend using the command-line tool Defrag.exe. The Windows XP graphical view also had some limitations and inaccuracies that prevented it from being included in Windows Vista. Interestingly enough, one of the biggest and consistent complaints we had from users (broad sample here from home users to experienced IT Pros) in the past was that a vast majority of them had no idea what the detailed fragmentation statistics they saw meant. The new interface seems “dumbed down.” Why remove all the detail? With the new UI, you can see that we really don't want defrag to be something that people have to worry about, just like any number of other low-level capabilities in the OS. It runs periodically and keeps your file system fragmentation at acceptable levels, making it unnecessary for you to launch the tool itself. The Windows Vista Disk Defragmenter was simplified primarily for the purpose of removing it out of the face of the user.
Why did you simplify the Disk Defragmenter interface?
First published on TECHNET on Jul 10, 2006
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