Test system
In the following the used hardware of the test system and the used software is described.
Hardware
- Mainboard: ASUS P5K
- CPU: E8400 @ 3GHz
- Memory: 4GB @ 800MHz
- Test disk: HD161HJ 160GB (HD-Tune benchmark)
- Data disk: HD501LJ 500GB
- Graphic card: Nvidia GeForce 8800GTS 512MB
- Sound card: Creative X-Fi
Software
Program installations and modifications to the system are made in the following order:
Installation and configuration
- Partitioning of the test hard drive into two partitions: 100GB (Data) and 50GB (OS)
The system partition is intentionally put at the slow end of the disk to slow it down artificially. - Installation of Windows XP Home SP2 32-bit
- Disable hibernation
- Disable the indexing service
- Set the values "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\DisablePagingExecutive" and "LargeSystemCache" to "1" to prevent unnecessary paging.
- Disable the update of the "last accessed" time stamp.
Since the test system is not used regularly, this time stamp could therefore irritate some defragmenters - Place a file directly behind the MFT so that it is forced to fragment.
A reserved area behind this file usually prevents fragmentation. A non-fragmented MFT however, would be useless for this test. - Set the pagefile to a fixed size of 1GB
- Create a first set of user files with FC-Test(Mp3 pattern: 270 files, 1GB total, about 2-5MB per file)
Drivers and updates
- Install the Intel chipset driver 9.2.0.1021
- install the XP Service Pack 3
- Install the WinFuture Update Pack from January 2011
- Install .NET Framework 1-3.5, DirectX 9.0c, JRE 6u23 and common runtime files fromSereby's All In One Runtimes 1.5.9
- Install the ACPI driver 1043.4.0.0 ATK
- Install the Atheros L1 network driver 2.4.7.29
- Install the X-Fi audio drivers pack
- Install the Wacom tablet driver 5.24-5
- Expand the size of the page file to 2 GB, so that it gets fragmented (into two parts).
- Place a file directly behind the MFT, so it is forced to fragment (again).
Programs
- Install Mozilla Firefox 3.6.13
- Install Adobe Reader 10
- Install OpenOffice.org 3.2.1
- Remove the installation files from OOo
- Install VLC Player 1.1.5
- Install Microsoft Security Essentials
- Install missing Windows updates from the Microsoft Update web site
- Install TV-Browser 2.7.6 and download 30 channels
- Install The GIMP 2.6.11
- Install Crap Cleaner 2.3.1343
- Create a second set of user files
Finishing up
- Disable the automatic boot optimization by setting the registry value "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Dfrg\BootOptimizeFunction\Enable" to "N".
After all, the third-party defragmenters are tested here. - Change the suffix of the user files to mp3 with AntRenamer to classify these as "spacehogs".
- Remove temporary and Windows Update backups with CCleaner
- Remove all Prefetch files to remove references to the installation files
- Run the tests 1-4 five times to create new prefetch files
- Execute "rundll32 advapi32.dll, ProcessIdleTasks" to create a new Layout.ini file
- Create an image of the system partition with DriveImage XML v2.22