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Diskeeper 7.0 Desktop/Workstation Edition by Jim Van Scyoc
March 2003
I was prompted to review this product because I was dissatisfied with the built in defragmentation utility that comes with Windows 98. Yes, the Microsoft Disk Defragmenter works, but it takes a long time. During defragmentation, the Disk Defragmenter must restart each time other programs write to the disk.
Having had concerns with the Windows defragmenter restarting over and over, I was intrigued that Diskeeper 7.0 will operate safely in the background while you are using the computer for other things! The version provided for review was a single user workstation edition in a box, with CD and printed documentation, which retails for $49.95.
The 98 page manual covers both server and desktop/workstation versions. A visit to Executive Software’s web site revealed that there are numerous combinations available, from the home edition obtained by download for only $29.95, to multiple license workstation versions and server versions available for any size business.
System requirements are simple: any x86 type processor (including Pentium) running Windows NT 4.0 Workstation, Windows 2000 Professional, Windows XP Professional and Home, Windows 95 (OSR 2 or higher), Windows 98 or Windows Me. No minimum processor speed or memory requirement is mentioned, though I understand there may be problems if you have insufficient free space on your hard drive. Depending on the operating system in use, Diskeeper supports NTFS, FAT 16 and FAT 32 files. My operating system is Windows 98, Second Edition, with FAT 32.
I took the precaution of backing up my data files before running this application. The box contains the manual, a single CD, registration card, license agreement, and advertisement for Undelete 2.0.
Popping the CD into my CD drive brings up an installer with three tabs: “Diskeeper,” “Tryouts,” and “Additional Resources.”
For the purposes of the review, I elected to simply install Diskeeper 7. When you do so, you get the usual license agreement, etc. If you want to install the program somewhere besides C:\Program Files, you need to choose the custom installation. I didn't see an option to install a desktop shortcut, but found the program under "Start, Programs." Checking the properties, I found that the program starts from "Diskeeper.msc" so I went to "My Computer" and made a shortcut for that file. (I'm running DragStrip, so I clicked and dragged that icon to my utilities tab in DragStrip.)
When you start the program the first time, an Orientation window appears over the Diskeeper window. It gives you some quick information on starting up, and can be disabled if you wish. (Otherwise, you can just click on "OK.") At the top of the Diskeeper window there is a toolbar with Action and View legends and a number of icons. Just below this is an area that shows your drives and data about them, including Session Status, File System, Capacity, Free Space and % Free Space. Below this display are several bars that display graphic data when you analyze your drives. Below the display are buttons for Analyze, Defragment, Pause, Stop, and View Report. These buttons duplicate most of the functions available in the tool bar. Below the buttons are the color codes for the conditions found on the drive, such as fragmented files and free space. Below this is a progress bar that indicates graphically the percentage of the current process completed.
The first time you run Diskeeper, you should analyze your drives. My system has a single 30.7 gigabyte drive divided into five partitions. Analysis of these partitions showed they varied from moderately fragmented to very heavily fragmented. (The latter is the logical drive I use to download mp3's and mpg's. I have made lots of deletions and additional downloads since I last defragmented this drive, so the condition is understandable.)
When analysis is complete, a report summary window displaysinformation about the drive selected. It can be turned off, if desired. The View Report button will bring up a complete report on the selected drive, which contains more information than the summary.I elected to do my first runs on the moderately fragmented drives, which had an average of 1.03 to 1.08 fragments per file. These took four and a half minutes for the smaller partition and six minutes for the slightly larger one. I was surprised to find out that it did not completely defragment free space. I checked the manual, and it says that a few fragments in free space do not significantly alter performance. The C drive took over 36 minutes to defragment. The analysis showed 764 fragmented files and 3559 fragments. Average per file was 1.21 fragments. I noticed that it did not defragment the Windows swap file. In an attempt to see if the regular Windows Disk Defragmenter worked on the swap file, I ran it after running Diskeeper on drive C. This took one hour and fifty minutes. The Windows program does NOT defragment the swap file. It DOES defragment the free space.
However, after running the Windows program, I went back to Diskeeper and found that while the free space was in one piece, there were now 5 fragmented files with 32 excess fragments. Diskeeper indicated that the volume was lightly fragmented and did not need defragmenting. The next to the last icon at the top (a folder with a red X at the top left) is used to select which files or folders should be excluded from defragmenting. Here you can specify such things as temporary and recycled files which you may plan to delete soon.
So far I have discussed manual operation. Diskeeper’s big claim to fame is “Set It and Forget It.” In other words, you can set the program up with a schedule to defragment your drives, and then forget about it as it goes ahead and works while you are doing other things. Under the Action legend at the top, you will find “Set It and Forget It” (or use the clock icon at the top far right) which brings up the Disk Volume Scheduler.
The easiest way to set this up is to have it defrag all drives under the “Smart Scheduling” option. Under “when” you can set it for every day or select a multiplicity of excluded or included days and times. Since I have no particular reason to exclude any specific day or time, I left “every day” selected. (If you have automatic backup set up for a particular time, that’s a good time to exclude from defragging.) What Smart Scheduling does is watch how many files are moved each time. If the number increases, the program runs on that drive more often. If it decreases, then it runs less frequently. However, the options in “Set It and Forget It” are set up primarily for those in a business environment, where the computer is either on 24/7 or set hours from Monday through Friday. (If you leave your computer on all the time, you can skip my quibbles on this feature.)
After a few days, I found that a couple of my logical drives were getting fragmented (though only moderately). Apparently my habit of shutting off the computer at night (or leaving it off some days when I wasn’t using it) was not allowing the automatic scheduling to work well. I went in and set it to operate every twelve hours, limited to the hours between 10 AM and midnight. When I went back a couple of days later, the fragmentation was almost zero.
One thing that will keep Diskeeper from working is heavy usage of the computer at the time it should be defragmenting. This is due to the priority feature. There are separate priority settings for the “Set It and Forget It” and manual defragmentation. As an experiment, I tried downloading four files while simultaneously uploading files during the time the defragmentation was scheduled. Since the priority was set at the lowest level, I was left with “moderate” fragmentation on the drive in question. Scheduled defragmenting at a later time cleared up the defragmentation level nicely. I think the “Smart Scheduling” probably will work best if you leave the computer running all the time.
In any event, you can also set fixed times for defragmentation for any time from two to seventy-two hours. Some of the intermediate steps are four, eight, twelve, and twentyfour. Then there’s “one time,” “continuously” and the previously mentioned “Smart Scheduling.” Note that if the computer is not running when the scheduled time occurs, the scheduled time changes to the next available scheduled time when you restart the computer.
How would I improve scheduling for Diskeeper 7.0? For those who operate like I do, running the computer at odd times for different periods of time, I would like to see a Boot-time defragmentation means that the MFT and paging files (which cannot be safely defragmented in the background) are defragmented during boot-up of the computer. This makes boot-up a longer process, but is the only safe way to accomplish defragmentation for these files.
If you wish to run Diskeeper 7.0 on a network, the server version can control operations on networked computers. Thus the operation can be transparent to individual computer users on the networked machines. As I mentioned earlier, the user’s guide supplied with 7.0 Workstation covers both server and workstation versions.
A second visit to the web site (after I thought I was finished writing the review) revealed that the information has changed since I looked at it when I started writing. Available as a download is “Diskeeper Lite for Windows,” a freeware introduction to Diskeeper. If you want to see how this application works, this is the way to see if you like the program. I downloaded the Lite version for my other computer. It comes as a self-extracting file dklite.exe. The interface is virtually identical to the full version. However, if you click “Set It and Forget It,” or “Priorities” or “Log Events,” you are prompted to buy the full version. The Lite version allows you to manually defragment each drive or partition one at a time. You can still set up files to exclude as in the full version.
The second view of the web site also revealed that there was an update to the 7.0 version I had. I downloaded this and installed it in place of the full version that came with the CD. There is a 12 page readme file with this update. It appears that a number of small improvements were made in the update. The update uninstalled the previous version of Diskeeper. The new installation kept the excluded file list, but my schedule was reset to “Smart Scheduling.”
If you buy the CD version, I recommend that you check the web site and see if there is an update. However, I would expect the downloaded programs to be the latest versions.
I like Diskeeper. I will continue to use it to defragment my computer. The speed and ability to work in the background at scheduled times make it a very usable program. It is definitely a big improvement over the Windows defragmenter feature which monitors actual computer running time. Then you could set the defragmenter to run based on how long the computer had been on since the last defrag. Diskeeper could then run (observing excluded times and days) at a given length of running time since the last defragmentation had occurred.
For those of you with Windows NT, 2000, or XP, there are additional features which don’t apply to Windows 95, 98 or Me. Diskeeper’s Frag Guard and Boot-Time Defragmentation serve to prevent and/or correct MFT (Master File Table) and paging file defragmentation. In addition, by running the full Boot-Time Defragmentation, your directories are also defragmented and consolidated.
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Product Information: Diskeeper 7.0
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