Review of Raxco PerfectDisk Disk Manager
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Review of Raxco PerfectDisk Disk Manager
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Here is what PerfectDisk 2008 can do, in terms of Hard Disk Management:
Run automated Fragmentation checks on specified days/ times, so that you do not have to rely on your memory alone
Let you optimize the placement of your Folders (Directories) as well and not merely your files alone
Let you specify which files to place fijdrst, (you might want to place all EXE files first), which should be placed next (you might want to put all DLL files right after the EXE files), which ones to place last, etc.
Let you defragment your Windows Swap File. The Swap File is huge – about 150% of the physical RAM your machine has – and therefore, could be broken up into hundreds of fragments. Defragmenting the Swap File usually leads to significant increase in Hard Disk performance
Load a small portion of itself into memory, thus continuously working in the background, saving files into contiguous areas as far as possible: all this in real time and without reducing overall Computer speed
Let you optimize your Removable Drives as well (USB Drives, Floppy Drives, etc.)
'Stealth' mode - PerfectDisk silently runs in the background, even as you work on your documents! However, this operation slows down your Computer, as it doubles hard disk read/ write operations
Configure PerfectDisk 2008 to run when your Screen Saver comes on as well, so that your Computer does not slow down during a scheduled defrag operation!
The following screenshots show PerfectDisk 2008 in action:
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If you have not enabled PerfectDisk's Boot Time Defrag option, you need to run the application, to get to the screen shown to the right here. To enable Boot Time defragmentation, you need to click which drives you would like defragged at boot time, by clicking the square Radio Buttons in the top half of the screen, under the 6th column. Our settings currently are such that none of our 3 partitions are defragged at boot time. Lets move on to the 3 Tabs in the bottom half of the screen, titled Drive Map, Performance and Statistics. Your Drive Map will become visible only after you analyze the current status of your Hard Disk. On analysis, you will get to see the current distribution of files on your Hard Disk (as a Histogram, to the left of the screen) and overall Current File Fragmentation (in the Pie Chart to the right of the screen). |
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Once you have analyzed your Hard Disk, the Performance Tab shows you the Performance, File Fragmentation and Free Space Fragmentation of your Hard Disk, before and after defragmentation, in the past as well as after the current run. Note that during the current run, our Hard Disk's performance has actually gone down, (the Yellow Bar is smaller than the Blue Bar) since we stopped the defragmentation so as to get on with this article! However, the File Fragmentation has improved, even though the defragmentation was stopped... |
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The 3rd Tab, titled Statistics presents this and other information in terms of percentage, with qualifying remarks. As you can see, our Hard Disk needs to have a larger free space chunk: although our Hard Disk partition has 10.7 Gigabytes of free clusters, the LARGEST size that the contiguous free clusters adds up to is a mere 2.82 Gigabytes. The rest of the free clusters are all mixed up with the occupied clusters! Under such conditions, the Windows Page File (to understand what is the Page File or Virtual Memory and what is optimal for your Computer, click here) would be sub-optimal, causing minor to major slowdowns in your Computer! With PerfectDisk 2008 set to do a Boot Time defragmentation, you can change all that! (More about that later, on this page) You can check out the other parameters by clicking the remaining lines of text to the left of the screen - File, Most Fragmented Files, Excluded Files, File Types, Performance Chart and Free Space Chart. PerfectDisk checks and reports it all! |
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Once you have analyzed your Hard Disk or Partition, select one of the following 3 options: SMART Placement, Consolidate Free Space or Defrag Only, right at the top of the screen. We recommend you select SMART Placement for maximum performance gains! Next, click on Entire Drive icon, to begin defragmenting your Hard Disk! A Hard Disk defragmentation drive can take hours, therefore you need to be patient!
We also recommend that you select the Boot Time defragment buttons. Once Windows starts up, a few very large files become unmovable, as they are continuously used by Windows. These are the following files:
pagefile.sys - which is your Windows Page File (also called Virtual Memory file. It is usually 150% the size of your physical RAM. Thus if your machine has 1 GB RAM, your pagefile.sys would be 1.5 GB in size - and fragmented into hundreds of bits all over your Hard Disk! As you can imagine, this is a file that is modified very frequently as well...
hiberfil.sys - which is your Notebook's Hibernate File. If you have enabled Hibernation on your Notebook and close the lid after work, this is where the 'current state' of your Notebook is written to. The next time you start up, you do so in seconds and get to exactly where you were when you hibernated your Notebook, thanks to this file! Once again, a file that is modified very frequently...
The Master File Table (MFT), if you are running an NTFS partition and the FAT Records, if you are running a FAT 16 or FAT 32 partition. We have already told you how critical the FAT and MFT are, so any defragmentation of these vital records has to be done very, very carefully indeed!
The Metadata on NTFS File Systems. This is yet another 'Unmovable' file, albeit a much smaller one...
The only way to defragment these files is to stop Windows from running - but then, how does the Disk Manager run before Windows has started up? Leave it to the top-notch Disk Managers - and be patient while it works, for, at the end of the run, you get to use a much faster Computer!
Yes, the first time you run defrag at Boot Time, it will probably take a long while, since you are likely to have very heavily fragmented unmovable files! However, later runs will take much lesser time. So patiently, let it complete - what you will get as the end result is a much faster Computer!
Our analysis of PerfectDisk 2008 was performed with their Trial version. Following are the commercial versions of PerfectDisk 2008:
PerfectDisk 2008 Professional - the basic PerfectDisk edition, for home/ Enterprises
PerfectDisk 2008 Server - for defragmenting general-purpose Servers - for Home/ Enterprise Servers
PerfectDisk 2008 for VMware Solutions - for Computers running as Virtual Machines - for Enterprises
PerfectDisk 2008 Command Center - allows the IT Administrator to defragment all Computers on the Network - for Small, Medium and Large Enterprises
PerfectDisk 2008 for Exchange - for Corporate Microsoft Exchange Servers
PerfectDisk 2008 for Windows Home Server - for Home Servers
PerfectDisk 2008 Rx Suite - Disk Defragmenter plus Windows Registry Optimizer plus Internet Security - for Home users
Phew - talk of choice of versions! Prices vary from US$ 39.99 (for the single-Computer Professional edition) and go as high as US$ 999.99 (for the VMware edition, with 25 clients). Attractive volume discounts have also been provided by the developers.
PerfectDisk 2006 too does not have an automatic uninstall option, though it can be removed cleanly by going the Control Panel - Add/ Remove Programs menu...
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Our Verdict
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For constant innovation, the best Defragmentation results and a flood of Analytical Reports, Raxco PerfectDisk earns our Thumbs Up! |
To purchase RerfectDisk Defragmenter, click on the link; http://www.raxco.com/home_office/home_office_perfectdisk_buy.cfm
