Diskeeper Professional Edition the ultimate defrag software for your computer?

Diskeeper is made by those very nice folks over at Executive Software, if you are running a Windows based PC you already have their software on your computer. As the standard defrag tools inside Windows are supplied by Executive Software to Microsoft and have been for many years now.

The latest version is Diskeeper 9 which adds several new features to an already rock solid piece of software. These new features are:

NEW High-speed defrag engine with I/O Smart™ technology provides undetectable background defragmentation.

NEW FragShield™ boosts system reliability by dynamically preventing fragmentation of critical system files.

NEW “Set It and Forget It” scheduling mode allows up to two schedules per volume, including Screen Saver and Smart Scheduling modes.

Other features include:

EXCLUSIVE! Smart Scheduling™ automatically schedules background defragmentation based on individual usage patterns.

EXCLUSIVE! Patented high-speed multi-pass engine defragments files and free space on an ongoing basis, preventing fragmentation build-up.

NEW! File Performance defragmentation mode gives a quick performance boost by defragmenting areas of the disk that are causing the biggest slowdowns.

EXCLUSIVE! Terabyte Volume Engine™ (Diskeeper Server Enterprise Edition), the first defrag engine specially designed to defragment large enterprise-level servers.

EXCLUSIVE! Diskeeper Administrator Edition provides complete centralized management, including support for defragmentation via Active Directory group policies.

Why pay extra for a defrag utility at all, after all Windows has one built right in as standard?

Well lets put it this way we have been using Diskeeper 9 now for several weeks and have found many of its features to be indispensable. First we have the killer feature, “Set it and forget it” once this is done you need never access the software again as it will monitor all hard drives and defrag them as and when needed or according to how “Set It And Forget It” was setup. For example you can set it so it will only run when the screensaver is active or at a specific day or time.

Diskeeper 9 now keeps an intelligent eye on what the computer is up to and will pause any background defragmentation when other programs or processes need access to the drive. This I/O Smart feature ensures that defragmentation with Diskeeper 9 never slows your system down.

Installation:

As expected the Installation went smoothly and without any incident. On first use the software will check with Executive Software to see if the is an update available. In our case one was available and so followed about a 19MB download and a new install.

Once running you are presented with a clear visual map of your drives, which with this new version has two views. The first being the drive map and the second a performance map. Executive explain theses as:

“The Drive Map pane gives a graphic representation of the fragmentation of your disk volume. The Drive Map pane shows additional detail, including the paging file (if it exists) and other system files like the MFT on NTFS volumes. It also shows all the fragmentation (even fragmented file that are not affecting your system’s performance).”

“The Performance Map pane gives a view of the fragmentation on your disk volume with an emphasis on the performance impact of that fragmentation.”

A point well worth making is Diskeeper 9 Professional can defrag several drives at the same time.

For those without any defragmenter other than the one that came with Windows, Executive Software's Diskeeper 9 in its various versions is a must have purchase.

For those that have seen the light and already own one of the previous versions then again in our view is it would be a desirable upgrade.

So have a look at Executive Software Own Website which has a good layout and is informative. See which is the best version for you and best of all you can download a fully working trial version of the one you like, they range in size from 10MB to 91MB.

As usual a first-class and worthwhile software package it deservers a place on any Windows desktop.

Other Versions Available:

Standard Edition
Administrator Edition
Server Edition
Server Enterprise Edition

Technical note: For those interested, the C drive on the review computer is made up of 2 X 200GB Maxtor Plus 10's SATA in a raid 0 setup offering 379GB of disk space and providing extreme performance. The single drive has an average speed of 53MB/s and burst speed of 121MB/s compare that to the twin raid 0 setup of 105MB/s average speed and 202MB/s burst speed.

Single Maxtor VS Raid 0 performance graph

BHReviews recommend and use Diskeeper 9 Professional.

Review Dated 20th March 2005 Updated 25th March 2005