Diskeeper 10
Diskeeper 10, formerly a product from Executive Software, is the current version of a disk-defragmentation suite of products that debuted in the era of Windows NT 4.0. Deeply aware of disk-defragmentation concerns early in the game, Executive Software worked jointly with Microsoft to develop Window's MoveFile API, which made safe disk defragmentation possible. Products in this suite start with the reasonably priced Home Edition and include versions for workstations and servers, as well as an administrative console for centralized management.
Defrag features. Diskeeper's algorithms focus on the goal of disk defragmentation—improving system performance—and aren't primarily concerned with creating a perfectly defragmented disk. Rather than make an urgent effort to pretty up the final map, Diskeeper 10 often leaves a few fragmented files on a volume. Diskeeper's Comprehensive Defragmentation option spends more time defragmenting free space than the Recommended Defragmentation option. However, for Diskeeper, "comprehensive" is a relative term; this option consolidates free space progressively over multiple scheduled runs. This option is available only for regularly scheduled defrag jobs.
Intelligent File Access Acceleration Sequencing Technology (I-FAAST) is a new feature in Diskeeper 10. I-FAAST continually monitors volume activity and performance over time, moving the most frequently accessed files to locations on the volume where the system can access them most rapidly. I-FAAST is included with Diskeeper's Professional Premier Edition and the two Server editions.
Diskeeper 10 runs as a service, monitoring system activity and performing automatic system idle-time defragmentation. Diskeeper 10 is intended to be placed into one of several "Set It and Forget It" scheduled modes; the product also supports standard time-of-day and day-of-week scheduling modes.
I particularly like Diskeeper's unique I/O Smart feature, which listens for I/O requests from other processes, pausing defragmentation and giving priority to other processing. According to Diskeeper, I/O Smart lets defragmentation occur in the background without degrading overall system performance, even on busy file servers.
The number and size of volumes Diskeeper 10 will defragment is a key difference between the various editions. The number of simultaneous volumes defragmented ranges from one to unlimited, and the largest supported volume ranges from 768GB to unlimited.
Management features. Diskeeper's new Administrator Edition is a console management program that lets you schedule and manage Diskeeper installations on servers and workstations across your network. Administrator Edition is a separate product and doesn't include the defragmentation engine.
Administrator Edition might be aptly renamed Diskeeper Wizard Central. You perform most administrative tasks through a guided, wizard-like procedure. This structure is a bit cumbersome to use. (I prefer a heavy use of context menus and tabbed configuration windows.) Nevertheless, Administrator Edition makes it easy to manage Diskeeper 10 across the network—for example, adding and removing managed computers, deploying different versions of Diskeeper to your systems, and setting schedules and defining alerts.
Testing. To begin my testing, I installed Administrator Edition on an XP Professional Service Pack 2 (SP2) system. The software required a Microsoft SQL Server or MSDE database for data storage. I took the MSDE option, downloading a Diskeeper-specific installation package from Diskeeper's Web site. I installed the Professional Premier Edition to the management console system, and installed the Server Edition to a fresh installation of Windows 2003 SP1, running a supplied .bat file to open ports through the firewall that the administrator uses. Figure 1 shows Diskeeper's after-defragmentation display. See Table 1 for the comprehensive results.
I found Diskeeper easy to use, both in standalone mode and when using the Administrator Edition console. I valued the I/O Smart feature and its ability to pause background defragmentation in the presence of other I/O activity on the system.
PerfectDisk 7.0
PerfectDisk comes in both Workstation and Server versions. Both support Windows 2000 and later, and both offer the same feature set, but neither come with volume size or count limitations.
Defrag features. The Raxco philosophy is that a disk is either fragmented or not fragmented. The software strives to defrag both files and free space completely—hence the name PerfectDisk. PerfectDisk runs as a service. PerfectDisk's file-placement strategy, called Smart Placement, groups recently modified files near the free space and places rarely modified files at the beginning of the disk. You can set the age of both groups. Although Smart Placement is the default method, PerfectDisk also supports a faster Defragment Only mode that skips the file-movement and free-space consolidation steps.
PerfectDisk's boot-time defragmentation option defragments system and NTFS metadata files, and if necessary, relocates and resizes the Master File Table (MFT) for optimal performance. PerfectDisk reports on its activity by creating a log file and optionally by logging error and informational messages to the System event log.
Management features. PerfectDisk is distributed in Microsoft Installer (MSI) packages, which you can deploy through such methods as direct installation, automated deployment with Group Policy, Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS), and third party deployment tools. PerfectDisk supplies a Group Policy administrative template that lets you schedule and configure PerfectDisk through Group Policy.
The PerfectDisk console runs in Standalone or Network mode. Network mode, which Figure 2 shows, requires administrative authority and lets PerfectDisk connect to other PerfectDisk clients for management purposes. PerfectDisk's Network Configuration Management Wizard asks you to select from a group of computers to manage from AD, as well as from those that appear in the Browse list, before setting the schedule and defrag options for the job. Although using the console to schedule a defrag for a group of computers is easy, it's a little cumbersome to go back and see which computers are grouped and when they're scheduled. You can also set configuration options (including defrag schedules) in a config.ini file and deploy them at installation time. When you install clients in Standalone mode, you choose whether to make the GUI available, thereby permitting users to manually defrag their systems.
If a computer isn't turned on at the scheduled defrag time, you can configure Perfect-Disk to wake it from Standby or Hibernation modes, to defrag when the computer starts up again, or to simply skip to the next scheduled defragmentation run time. A threshold-based defragmentation option lets PerfectDisk skip a scheduled defrag run if PerfectDisk's Analyze function finds that disk fragmentation is less than a percentage that you specify.
Testing. PerfectDisk is easy to install and operate. As you can see in Table 1, PerfectDisk performed effective defragmentation runs. Curiously, it did slightly better on the 5 percent free space volume than it did on the 20 percent free space volume.
PerfectDisk 7.0 is an effective, easy-to-use defragmentation utility. Although it lacks built-in push-deployment features, its auto-update feature and Group Policy and MMCbased management features will simplify management throughout your organization.
Defrag Manager 4.0
Defrag Manager 4.0 has an interesting architecture: It's available in one edition that works on all Windows versions since Win2K, as well as on NT in its offline modes. Defrag Manager has no volume size or volume count limitations.
Defrag features. Defrag Manager takes a three-phase approach to volume defragmentation. The first phase is a quick pass to defragment most files, the second phase more aggressively defragments files, and the third (optional) phase aggressively consolidates free space. Scheduled use of Defrag Manager defragments all volumes of a target system, although you can use the Command-Line Interface (CLI) locally to defrag individual volumes on demand.
Defrag Manager supports two offline or boot-time defragmentation modes. The first mode automatically defragments critical system files (i.e., paging and registry files). A second mode—Advanced Mode—uses a Windows Preinstallation Environment (PE) bootable CD that incorporates Windows kernel-mode technology to perform a complete system defragmentation, including data files, file-system metadata, and other files that might be untouchable when Windows is running. Using Advanced Mode, you can defragment volumes that are formatted with a cluster size larger than 4KB. For greater efficiency, this mode can also use space allocated to a paging file on the volume. Even in its offline modes, Defrag Manager is fully compliant with Windows file system APIs.
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