Executive Diskeeper 9.0 Professional - Single User review:5 stars (Excellent Tool: A must-have) - This is an excellent piece of software, and I recommend it for everyone. This tool is as valuable to me as Lavasoft's Ad-Aware.
I'm a computer professional and as soon as most people find out, their first response is, "Oh my god you need to look at my computer it's SO SLOW. You need to look at it." My typical regiment is:
1) Download, Install, and Run Lavasoft's Ad-Aware
2) Scan for viruses using McAfee's free online scan (Always up-to-date, despite what may be installed)
3) Run through the registry's run and startup folder to stop unnecessary programs from starting on load
4) Download, Install, Schedule, and Run Diskeeper.
People are amazed at how much faster thier computer runs. In fact, after a fresh install I also run Diskeeper just to squeeze every drop of performance out of the PC as possible.
Two important things to note:
- Why is defragmenting important?
- Why not use the built-in defragmenter?
Answers:
Let's say you're writing a document in MS Word. You save the document and close it. Then you begin to write another word document. When you save the second document to disk, windows will likely put the new file immediately after the old file. Well, what happens when you add new stuff to the first file if the second file took up the space the first file had left immediately after it? Well it saves the new changes in the space AFTER the second file, hence creating a fragmented file.
A fragmented file is a file the is not contiguous, and has segments in different physical locations on the hard disk. Picture a fragmented file as a file with other files inside of it, breaking it apart.
If you research hard disk statistics, you'll see 2 common factors in rating hard disk performance: Seek time and transfer speed. Transfer speed is the MAXIMUM speed in which your hard disk can transfer the information over a wire from the disk itself to the computer, after the data is located. Seek time is the average amount of time it takes for the hard drive to locate the file on the disk, when it's not already reading it.
Picture a record player. You place the needle on the song you want to play. As long as you leave the needle in place, the music will play. If you want to change the song, however, you need to life the needle and place it at the location of the new song. When you replace the needle, the music continues. Hard drives are very similar.
If the hard drive is reading a file, it is transferring that file over the wire as quickly as it can read it. If that file is fragmented, however, it needs to "Seek" the location where the file continues. A lot of people will know this as a "Clicking" sound the hard drive makes.
If the computer is trying to read multiple files at once (as most computers do, ESPECIALLY when booting up), and those files are fragmented, the drive is doing a LOT of seeking and less actual data transfer. This is often referred to as "Thrashing" by IT guys, or "Grinding" by others. You'll notice this if your hard drive is doing a lot of work, but your computer is acting very sluggish, making what would be a fast computer very slow. This is because your hard drive is spending more time looking for the data (Seeking) then actually reading the data (transferring), and sending it to your computer.
The hard drive is usually the performance bottleneck for most personal computers. Diskeeper greatly increases your performance by allowing your hard drive to read the files as quickly as possible, making the slowest part of your computer much faster.
Lastly, the built-in defragmenter is slow and "Clunky." It takes a great deal of time to defragment, and doesn't optimize the drive as well to prevent further defragmentation. Moreover, you have to trigger the deframenting manually, and then you can't use your computer for hours. No one ever really does that...
BOTTOM LINE:
Want your computer to run like new every day?
Install Ad-Aware
Install an Anti-Virus
Install Diskeeper
Run your computer like a PRO.3 stars (getting better.................) - I still have to give the top 2 defragger utility spots to, O&O Defragger software or Raxco's Perfectdisk, respectively.
If I were to place these 3 programs, it would be:
1st place - O&O Defrag V8.0
2nd place - Raxco perfect disk V7.0
3rd - Executive's "diskkeeper"
O&O has got to be the "gold standard" against which the other defragger's are compared to.
A true "swiss army knife" of defragger's.
You decide "HOW" you wish to defrag a system.
You have like 6 ways to defrag, based upon how YOU want it done.
[Example: workstation, file server, database server, etc]
Don't take anyone's word alone; All of the above mentioned companies offer DEMOs of their programs.
Do yourself a favor and "test-drive" each product BEFORE you buy.
You can easily make your own "informed decision", simply by test-driving and comparing each one.
And the demos are good for between 15-30 days.
Happy testing.5 stars (Ugraded from Exec. Diskeeper 8.0 to 9.0) - Great software. The defragging of a hard drive use to take hours when I used the manual windows defragger. I was so impress with the quick and easy use of the software on the 8.0 Pro version that I went and bought the 9.0 Pro version. You can set it up on schedules to work in the background while you work or while the computer is in screensaver mode. I opt for the everyday when ever the file fragment got to 1.0 percent that the software would start. The software started and I never even knew it was running. Unless I look at the taskbar and see a new icon. You can have many and I mean many programs and windows opened and the defragger would still work flawlessly. The performace of the computer never dips. I have XP Pro 3.0Ghz CPU and 1 GB of memory and I use my computer to the max. I have 1 GB of memory like I said that I use and and I still think that it is not enough. I really you my computer to max. I sometimes overclock the cpu and with the defragger I keep the computer as fast as the first day I started it. Trust me anyone you buys this for their computer will definitely not be sorry. I loved it some much that I cannot wait for the 9.0 Pro version to come in the mail. There is so many new features in the new version. The current version has a schedule called set it and forget it. Which literraly mean set it and forget it. The defragger only comes on when it needs to. Everything is totally automatic. |
