Diskeeper 2007 Pro Premier
Most people who use computers know that one of the factors that can slow down the speed of the machine is fragmentation of the hard drive. In essence, what happens is that when you store a document or file on an empty drive, the data is put in as one contiguous set of tracks. As the file gets edited the system might not be able to keep all its pieces together, so it sticks in a note saying where it is putting the rest.
It is as if you have a file cabinet with a certain number of fixed slots into which you stick manuscripts. When you first start, you might stick a large manuscript into the first five slots, and the next manuscript into the next four slots. If you add to the first manuscript, you won’t want to move the next four folders, so you’ll stick in a note saying to look in folder ten. As the file cabinet fills with documents, and they become more spread out, it starts taking to long to find all the pieces of a given manuscript, so you take everything out, and put it all back with each document put back in order.
The same thing happens with your hard drive, as files get more and more fragmented, and require more and more time for the operating system to find each of the fragments. What disk defragmentation does is look at each file, find all its pieces, and turn it back into one contiguous file. As you can imagine, if the disk is heavily fragmented the system will need to spend a lot of time shuffling pieces of files around until each has all its pieces together. Traditionally this is done by manually telling the defragmentation software to run, or scheduling a run for some time convenient to you, like three in the morning, when you are asleep.
Diskeeper, which we discussed in the March 2005 ÆGIS, is arguably the leader in disk defragmentation technology. The Diskeeper 2007 Pro Premier version of their software (they make several versions, including a version for servers, which we did not test) eliminates the need for a manual or scheduled defragmentation. Instead, it is actively running 24 hours a day, taking advantage of unused system resources and idle time. It is so cleverly done that it appears use no system resources whatsoever. In addition, the program contains a host of analytical tools that allow you to configure your drive to give the best possible results.
Diskeeper 2007 Pro Premier is available for the home user on-line for $99.95 (we did not look at the cost of business purchases of multiple copies) at http://www.diskeeper.com/. We consider Diskeeper 2007 Pro Premier well worth the price, and recommend it as highly as we did its predecessor.
