There's been a lot of defrag talk on these forums, including under Vista. Do a search and you'll find some good discussion.

As to your specific question, I would say that Auslogics defrag is so very fast because it does not do what I consider a good job. It looks to me as if Auslogics only handles fragmented files. It does not consolidate free space, consolidate used space, defragment metadata, and does not move frequently accessed files together for improved access speed. These are the features that I like in a defragger.

The defrag that is built-in to Windows is slow, but does a better job. I just set it to run and leave. Other defraggers that I know of that I consider to do a good job are Raxco PerfectDisk and Diskeeper. Both of these are commercial products with trial versions. I suggest that you give each a try and then decide.

This must be the third or fourth defrag thread in the past few weeks, and FWIW, my opinion has not changed: don't waste time defragging manually. Auslogics is particularly useless - it does not defrag the MFT/PF and I think it skips many other files. Use a good automatic defragmenter instead and save yourself the hassle of manual/scheduled defrags which are time-consuming especially for multiple volumes. The auto defragger will proactively keep the file system low on fragmentation, on it's own.

I would also be interested in Tigers recommendations

Both of the products that I mentioned, PerfectDisk and Diskeeper, will do auto-defragging. These are the ones I have tried and recommend.

EDIT: can we pin a thread in the Vista forum? It seems that defrag is a FAQ.

Jack, when I say "commercial products" that means they cost money. Is that confusing? Should I say it another way? Also, both of these cost-money products have a trial version.

Keep in mind that Vista's built-in defrag runs once a week automatically by default. Great for those of us that leave the computer on... less good for those who do not. The built-in defrag really isn't terrible for regular use.

I personally took off the automatically defrag by Vista thats built in that The Geek, was talking about. The time that the Vista defrag comes, I am at the peak use of my laptop.

For those that want to change the time or run a defrag go: Right Click (Drive you want to defrag) -> Tools -> Defragment Now.

@WHS and Lighthouse, yes, I do use Diskeeper 2008. Probably mentioned it in one of the recent defrag threads, but missed mentioning it on this thread; my apologies.

I find that I have not had to manually defrag after using this version for the past 4 months or so. I like it's automatic operation :)

There are some users who run multiple defraggers, 'performance tuning' programs and whatnot to 'optimize' the performance. IMHO, they are just wasting their time because the minimal performance gains (if any; often negative) with all these many manual system 'optimizations' do not exceed the time+resources wasted in the tweaking process.

I used to be a compulsive tweaker too, until I slowly realized that I was tweaking Windows more than actually using it for something productive. As a result, these days I usually tend to leave the system alone, and use the automatic approach for system maintenance. After all, software updates, AV realtime scanning, etc have largely become automatic and work very well, why not defragging.

Overall, using a Windows PC, especially Vista, now has become much easier than it used to be with Win9X and (ugh) ME. Ofcourse, everything ultimately depends on the user's specific system setup and software loadout; a specific program that works for one may not for another.

-Sorry for the long post..just rambling a bit. Please feel free to delete, if inappropriate/off topic-

Good point there Tiger. For me, the computer is now a hobby, so my fun is messing about with it. For others that use it for a living, or keep important info on it, different matter.

@Scott- Donn Edwards feels as you do about JK defrag ('The Great Defrag Shootout') so I'm going to try that.One question,who the heck is Donn Edwards?