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Using your personal computer |
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Hilton Head Island Computer Club |
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Diskeeper 7.0 SE |
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Diskeeper 7.0 Second Edition Executive Software released Diskeeper 7.0 Second Edition in early February 2003 and sent me a copy for review. I had been using Diskeeper 7.0 for about a year and this was an opportunity to see the updates and gain more information about the product. The product was working very well for me and I would recommend it as an OS enhancement. Diskeeper is a disk defragmenter and they claim to have about 97% of the market for corporation using a defragmenter. Lets talk about hard drives and how they store data. A hard drive has circular platters and the magnetic surface is configured into tracks and each track subdivides into fixed size clusters. When Windows writes to the hard drive it tries to write to a continuous location. If it encounters a pre written area, it must find the next closest available free clusters. These clusters may be on another track or a distance away from where they are on the same tract. Since the disk is rotating it must first step to the right track and then wait for the right cluster to be below its head. Access time is the results and depending how many times it needs to chase non-continuous data it slows the computer down and may increase the chance of producing errors. In every version of Windows that I have ever had, a defragmenter has been included with the OS. In the early days it was interesting and relative quick to watch the data being arranged into perfect order and all the free space available for more data. As the drives became larger and larger it became a long process and it did not give you a feel of how well it had done the defragging. In later versions of Windows there was a Maintenance Wizard that would schedule regular times but still no feel of what was done. Microsoft had always contracted another software company to write the defragmenter and include it in the Windows software and I know Diskeeper is the one provide with Windows 2000 and XP but it may also have been provided with Windows NT. When you look at the Diskeeper defragmenter it has a graphic look and when used to analyze a drive it shows in color the types of files and the fragmented ones. And when you select Defragment Now it provides a view as it does the job. The one provided with Windows can do only one drive at a time and it can now be automated. Because Diskeeper uses the Console Root approach to its task it cannot be scheduled with the Task Scheduler. It also lacks speed and feature provide with three different versions. For a complete list of features go to Diskeeper Features The Home version should be the one to meet all the needs of an individual user. Here is a list features: · “Set It and Forget It”~ operation. Diskeeper runs in the background, transparently. Without interruption to you. · Built with the most advanced defragmentation technology. Uses a minimum of resources. · Runs automatically after initial scheduling set up. · Smart Scheduling TM auto-adjusts defrags run-time frequencies to the fragmentation rate of each disk. · Lightning-fast Microsoft-recommended boot-time defragmentation of critical system files. · Able to create group schedules customized for the data traffic flow of specific portions of the network operations on the network remotely, from his/her own console. · Cannot be accessed by the end user, so there are no complicating interventions. · Adjustable priority levels perfect for integration with production loads. · Defragments disk volumes faster than they are being fragmented. · Centrally deployable (installation). · Enables the system administrator to manage/inspect all defragmentation · Screen Saver Mode. When selected, runs Diskeeper when screen saver is on use on the computer. · Is as scalable as the operating system. |
