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Due to the way Windows degragments drives, you will need at least 10% and more preferably 20% of the drive space to be unused. At the very minimum you'll need free space at least equal to the largest fragmented file on disk, and possibly up to double that. I've used DisKeeper and OO Defrag as well as Microsoft's own (limited) defragmenter, and the above is still true.


The Microsoft defragger is actually a very stripped down DiskKeeper in 2000/XP/2003. So the mythical percentage free rules apply there. Whoever came up with a percentage figure should be slapped hard, since 20% of a modern 300 gig drive is an insane 60 gigs of space. Why would a defragger need 60 gigs of space to do the job right?

I'm running the demo of PerfectDisk right now, after getting tired of DiskKeeper whining about my 9% free space on my 100 gig drive. PerfectDisk not only does a better defrag job, it also does some logicial orginazation of the disk. boot files at the very front, most recently used files towards the end, and the MFT and other relevant meta data near the middle to reduce seek times. Based on how well it has done with my disks, I'll be buying it soon.