Smart Defrag needs less than 15MB of RAM, doesn't fire up until your system has been idle for 5 minutes, and stops as soon as other applications become active again, so it never got in our way. We wondered if this meant the program would compromise the performance of other applications, but this really isn't the case. You're able to launch any of these defrag options on demand, on a schedule, or even in the background after your PC has been idle for a few minutes.

You're able to defragment files alone, defrag and compact free hard drive space, or use a 'deep optimise' mode to reorganise your hard drive files for the best possible speeds. The program has a variety of defrag strategies, for instance. Fortunately there are plenty of free alternatives around, and IObit Smart Defrag is one of the best.

So it's a pity that Windows' own defrag tool is slow, short on features and has a poor interface, especially in Vista. Defragmenting your hard drive can make a real and significant difference to your PCs performance.

Iobit smart defrag pro v5.7