Product Reviews
Defragmentation that Works
Diskeeper 5.0 provides optimizing services for your entire network.
Every once in a while you run into a software product
that does one thing so well that it’s hard to imagine any improvements.
Diskeeper 5.0 is such a product. If you’ve been around the
computer industry for any length of time, you’ve run across
the issue of disk fragmentation: As you work with files on your
hard drive, they get split into multiple discontiguous chunks by
the operating system. This slows down file access because the hard
drive heads have to travel farther to get the same data.
The solution to fragmentation is defragmentation—software
that rearranges your hard drive to make all the files nicely contiguous
again, preferably with most-used files in the fastest areas on your
drive. Independent software vendors (ISVs) and Microsoft recognized
this long ago, and disk defragmentation utilities appeared on the
market. Ultimately, Microsoft built such utilities into the operating
system and provided APIs for ISVs to use.
Diskeeper provides a simple, uniform interface for
disk defragmentation across the entire Windows product line from
Windows 95 to Windows 2000 Advanced Server. It’s simple to
install and easy to use: click “Analyze” to find out whether
you need to defragment your drive, and then click “Defragment”
if you need to take action. The program runs happily in the background
and co-exists with other active processes. There’s no need
to shut down the computer, log out of data files, or otherwise alter
your work habits while Diskeeper is doing its work.
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After the initial setup and optimization of
disk on servers or clients, you can turn on Diskeeper 5.0's
"Set It and Forget It" feature--one less admin task.
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Once you’ve done the initial defragmentation
run, you can use the “Set it and Forget it” feature to
schedule periodic defragmentation. This schedules Diskeeper as a
service, providing continuous optimization for your hard drive.
Best of all, Diskeeper is network-aware. A single server installation
can connect to and control any number of server and workstation
installations on your network. As a network administrator, you can
use Microsoft SMS to push Diskeeper out to all the computers on
your network (the wonderfully clear manual includes instructions
for doing this), connect to them from your own computer, and schedule
periodic defragmentation everywhere.
A 30-day trial download is available from the
company’s Web site. You can also purchase and download the
full product via the Web site at a slight savings over list price.
About the Author
Mike Gunderloy, MCSE, MCSD, MCDBA, is a former MCP columnist and the author of numerous development books.