I am often asked what I do to insure that I get clean, reliable ‘burns’ of data to optical media. Of course I rattle off the obligatory “[a] Use a good quality media like Taiyo Yuden or Ritek RiData (My favorite cost/performance brand which I purchase from Meritline.Com or Supermediastore.Com) and [b] burn your data at one-half the rated speed of the media (e.g. 8x on 16x rated media),” but I also add a third preparatory measure of defragmenting the file or directory of files to be burned. Now, the obvious question that arises is “So I have to defragment my entire disk every time I want to burn music, video, or data files?” No you do not, thanks to a couple of great, free, stand-alone utilities for the Windows platform.
The solution I have employed for the last several years has actually been composed of two small utilities that function as one piece of software. I start out with Contig, part of the indispensable Sysinternals Suite by Mark Russinovich. Quote “Contig is a single-file defragmenter that attempts to make files contiguous on disk. Its perfect for quickly optimizing files that are continuously becoming fragmented, or that you want to ensure are in as few fragments as possible.”
To add a GUI (graphical user interface) to Contig, I employ eXcessive Software’s Power Defragmenter GUI. Once installed, you simply launch Power Defragmenter GUI which calls Contig. The user simply selects which file(s) or directory(ies) they wish to defragment, click [OK] and the job is done.
I recently discovered a new utility that replicates the functionality of my existing solution, but rolls it up into a single executable. The program is the aptly named ‘WinContig:’
“WinContig is an easy-to-use stand-alone defragmentation tool that doesn’t create any installation directories or Registry entries on your computer. Its purpose is to quick defrag files without the need to defrag the whole disk. Its defragmentation and analysis engine is based on the standard Microsoft defragmentation API. In addition, WinContig allows you to group files into profiles, and also it accepts a number of optional command-line switches that you can use to control how the program operates.”
After testing WinContig, I have found it a worthy addition to my Windows utility toolbox. Both Contig and WinContig have feature sets that can be valuable in different circumstances and, so, I have taken the unusual step of keeping both programs installed on my system. Be sure to use the previously mentioned ZipInstaller to make installation, testing and (if required) uninstallation of any or all of these applications a snap.
UPDATE: If you are a Raxco PerfectDisk user, note that PerfectDisk does offer single file as well as whole-disk defragmentation.
