"Paul" wrote in message
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NoonName wrote:

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

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


I don't know why this question is cross-posted to the Win7
group, as you're not asking about Windows 7.

1) The built-in WinXP defragmenter is pretty good. It packs to
the left, and tries not to leave gaps. I've seen worse
defragmenters. And nobody wants to pay $39.95 for some
piece of crap they can't transfer to a second computer.

Assuming it works on XP (and I've not tried it) Piriform's Defraggler is a
good alternative to the built-in defragger for XP. It has the advantage that
you can choose whether to:

1. defrag the whole drive, eliminating any gaps

2. just defrag the fragmented files, leaving gaps

3. defrag the free space which eliminates most but not all gaps

I tend to do 2 then 3 which leaves as much contiguous free space as possible
at the end of the drive, without taking as long as 1. As long as there is
plenty of contiguous space, you can probably get by with just doing 2.

The XP defragger only does the whole lot - the equivalent of 1 - so it is
slow.