Total Defrag 2009 Special Edition [Now Free for Home Use]

I have been using Paragon tools for a while now. They make a pretty good defragmenter tool as well as a partition manager, Rescue software, Hard Drive Tools and Backup programs. None of which I have ever covered here on MakeUseOf.com for the simple fact that they cost money. We feature free products here and today I have learned the Paragon has made several of its products free for home use. They call them ‘Special Editions’. Today we will be downloading and taking a look at Total Defrag 2009 Special Edition.

I went to this link http://www.paragon-software.com/registration/td2009.html to grab my copy. They ask you to register and provide an email address where you can receive your license information. For those of you who still do not like giving out their email address we have covered plenty of self destructing email addresses which you can find here and here.

You can start your download before you get the email so you will be ready to go when the information arrives. You have to log into http://kb.paragon-software.com/ess with the information in the email. The trial download does not allow you to register it with this information.

My email came pretty quickly it looked like this:

Thank you for your interest in Paragon Total Defrag 2009 Special Edition!
The product is registered with:
PRODUCT KEY / USER NAME: PRODUCT KEY DELETED
SERIAL NUMBER: SERIAL NUMBER DELETED
Additional information about this software can be found in Paragon’s Knowledge Base available at http://kb.paragon-software.com

With that product key and serial number I was able to download and install the software. It is a 17.5 MB installer that came in very quickly. You are downloading the trial version and then you will input your registration information. Make sure the following window does not say ‘TRIAL’.

When the install is complete you will see an image of your first drive like so:

Let’s take a quick look at the minimal settings:

We should leave it on Safe Mode even though it will take longer to run to completion – there is little to no chance you will mess up your Windows install in safe mode. You have options from the menu to Check File System Integrity. It requires exclusive access to your file system and will ask for a reboot.

This is a beefed up version of scandisk. Total Defrag can do a volume surface test as well in ether normal or extreme mode.

Analyzing your partition will give you information about your fragmentation like so:

And finally what we have all been waiting for the defragmentation…Click on Partition – Defragment – Defragment Partition to get the ball rolling.

You will have the above options for your defragment… Nice! I love having options . Set your options and click Yes. The defragmenting will take off. A warning will pop up telling you that you should back up your data before you begin. I would say that you should ALWAYS have a backup of your files.

Feel free to back up first and then click Yes. If Total Defrag sees problems with the volume you will get a message telling you to use ChkDisk first…

In this case I would run the File System Integrity Checker and have it fix the errors. When Total Defrag is complete your drive should be mostly green like this:

Stay tuned for more reviews on the now free Paragon suite! What do you use for defragmenting? Do you have a favorite free tool? Share it with us in the comments!