Use the Optimization Advisor
The Optimization Advisor recommends a method separately for each selected drive. Use it when you want an explanation before starting, especially with a mixture of HDDs and SSDs.
Get a recommendation
- Select one or more drives in Drive Optimization.
- Open Optimization Advisor.
- Choose an optimization goal.
- Review each drive's recommendation, explanation, and alternatives.
- Choose Analyze only if fresh analysis is needed, or Apply recommendations to start the proposed work.
A drive that is busy or queued is excluded from the plan. Analyze first means fragmentation data is missing. Nothing to do means the chosen goal does not currently justify an operation.
Choose a goal
| Goal | Intended result |
|---|---|
| Best result | Select an effective method for each drive, accepting higher temporary drive activity where useful. |
| Stay responsive | Favor lower system load while you continue to use the computer. |
| Join free space | Favor free-space consolidation, for example before partition shrinking or imaging. |
Consolidating free space does not shrink a partition or create an image. Those remain separate tasks. Locked data and file-system structures can still limit how far another tool can shrink a volume.
Read the method ratings
Recommended, Suitable, and Not advisable are relative to the selected drive and goal. Alternatives can need more time, more free space, or more writes. A method rated poorly for an SSD may still have a use on an HDD.
The Advisor can warn that last-access sorting is ineffective when Windows is not tracking access times. It can also suggest freeing space before a complete reorganization.
If a duration estimate is shown, it can be based on a previous run. Data changes and competing activity can make the actual time differ.
Automatic choice from the toolbar
Enable Choose the best method automatically or select Advisor selects per drive in the method menu. The action becomes Optimize (recommended). This lets O&O Defrag select an appropriate method for each drive rather than applying one manually chosen method to all of them.
Review Methods when you need explicit control. The command-line default is separately defined: OODCMD defrag uses SOLID/Quick unless you specify a method.