How to Defrag Specific Files and Folders, Not An Entire Disk

I've talked about how to defrag a drive and how to defrag multiple drives at once. Now what if you want just a folder or even a file to defrag? This post covers two free third-party applications that can do this specific job. Both are easy to use, but each has its unique feature (and of course weakness).

WinContig

What makes it stand out from the rest similar programs is that it allows you to completely free to choose which files or/and folders you want to defrag, and that you can make profiles for any defragment task you've executed.



Its capability to create profiles is very helpful when you have one or more folder(s) containing files you modify regularly. Do the defragmentation, and save it as a profile. After that, whenever you want to defrag all the folders you just have to activate the saved profile.

What you can get from and do with WinContig:

• Ability to analyze the fragmentation levels for all selected folders and files
• Add files or folders as many as you want
• Detailed report for analysis and defragmentation
• Small size - around 300KB for the reviewed current version
• Portability - no installation is needed
• Optionally checking volumes for any errors before starting to defrag
• Provides some optional command-line switches

OS supported: Windows 2000/XP/Vista
License: Free for personal and commercial use
Version reviewed: 0.77


Defraggler

What makes it interesting though it's still in beta, honestly, is that it comes from the developer of the popular free file cleaner, CCleaner. This programs is created specifically for defragmenting only selected files.



Things from Defraggler you may not want to miss out:

• How to use - First you analyze a selected drive, and it will list all the fragmented files within. Then you can freely select which of the files you think need to defrag
• Portability - Yes, you need to install it first, but then you can just copy the exe file from your Program Files folder to a USB drive
• The unique feature - when you click a file name on the fragmented file list, Defraggler shows you how much it occupies your disk space, how fragmented it is, and the location of each of its fragmented blocks on the disk. You can see all the information in a quick glance as they are shown in a graphical manner.

It's still in beta version, so there will be some frequently improvements on it.

OS supported: Windows 2000/2003/XP/Vista
License: Free for personal and corporate use
Version reviewed: 1.01.044 BETA