NoonName

1) what is the best defragger that will handle Win XP with HDD ?

I don't know about the *best*, but XP carries its own program for it. Aptly
named "defrag.exe" (\windows\system32)

2) does a laptop with a SSD ever need defragging ? When ?

Although I'm far from an athority on this matter, SSDs randomize the actual
physical blocks the sectors are written in (to even-out wear-and-tear over
the whole SSD memory). Defragging therefore should not mean anything to
such a drive (you would just move data from one unknown-placed block to
another as-unknown placed block)*.

Besides, SSDs are (AFAIK) random access, and (again) should not benefit from
having sectors placed sequentially (where classical spinning disks certainly
would).

*I could imagine that the SSD recognises a sector-to-sector copy, and will
actually ignore the write (and just point the second block to the first. In
other words, de-duplicate).

Regards,
Rudy Wieser