Customer Reviews

Diskeeper 10 Professional - 1 User

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As a Norton Utilities user for more than 15 years, you can tell that it takes a lot to get me to change utility software. But the Symantec products, as good as they are, seemed to get `fatter' every year and seemed to be al contributor to a slowing PC, so I started playing with alternatives. While you give up some of Symantec's integration, there are simply superior tools out there these days, and Diskeeper is clearly one of them.

First, I started trying a number of `trial' versions of various products before settling on Diskeeper. I had just completed a trial period on version 9 and was ready to buy Diskeeper 9 when the new version 10 came out. Since I have not used v9 for a lengthy period of time, I cannot confirm what the various improvements are, but I can confirm that everything that had me ready to buy v9 in the first place is there in v10, plus some. And vs. my tried and true Norton Speed Disk, Diskeeper wins hands down. Some of the key features that Speed Disk cannot match include:

1. Speed: A full manual defrag takes significantly less time with Diskeeper. What used to take hours with Norton was done in less than half the time.

2. Thoroughness: On one of my PCs I ran Norton's Speed Disk just before running the trial version of Diskeeper to see if there was any difference between how the two `saw' the hard drive. After Norton reported a fully defragged disk, Diskeeper clearly reflected some remaining fragmentation that Speed Disk did not. Perhaps the difference is not significant, but Diskeeper clearly found more fragments and handled them.

3. Intellegence: Diskeeper's `Set It and Forget It' feature is so superior to the simplistic scheduling function in Speed Disk. It will defrag quietly in the background on a continuous basis when your PC is not active, keeping your disk less fragmented all the time vs. just defragging on a set schedule. It allows you to select different levels of defragging as well as two different `schedules' so you can do quick defrags all the time to keep things relatively clean and do a deep, comprehensive defrag occasionally to insure the best defrag possible.

4. Communication: The screens for Diskeeper allow both novice and power user to have all the information they want. You can see not only what files are fragmented but which are causing the most performance drag and what level of improvement is possible with a full defrag by Diskeeper.

5. Registry Defrag: Not possible with Speed Disk at all, Diskeeper allows you to run at start up to defrag the important registry files. Since the registry `tells' Windows how to operate and since years of use will cause the registry to often fill with junk, cleaning the registry (not a Diskeeper function - see note below) and defragging the registry (Diskeeper does do this) can help speed your PC up. In fact, this may be more important for many older PCs than defragging the disk itself. Diskeeper 10 now includes a function that helps protect the registry from becoming fragmented in the future, too.

Overall, I am thoroughly impressed with Diskeeper. What you give up in Norton Utilities' integration is more than made up for in a superior overall product. Sometimes having software focused on doing one thing well is better than a Swiss Army knife approach and this is such an occasion. And if you are unsure, you can download a trial version and see for yourself before you buy. (FYI, Kudos to Amazon on my purchase. I ordered on Friday, Dec. 30th and had my Diskeeper on Tuesday, the next business day after New Years. And that was using the free freight option!)

As a side note on Registry management, specifically registry clean up, I would also recommend TuneUp Utilities 2006 as an outstanding and complementary product to Diskeeper. TuneUp '06 (I think it may be only downloadable from their web site?) provides a ton of tools to speed up your PC along with a true registry clean up utility that, again, blows Symantec away. Having had Norton Utilities on my PCs for years, I was shocked to see how much junk was sitting in my registry that Norton had not cleaned up for years. I do not like to play with the registry on my own, but TuneUp '06 is as easy to use as Norton and it is far more thorough. Again, you can download a trial version to see if it works for you, but the combo of TuneUp '06 with Diskeeper will do more for your registry (and other things) than Norton by a very wide margin.

I have used Diskeeper for several years, and purchased Pro version 10 when it came out. The layout and general operation are very good and there is no competing product thgat approaches its speed, reporting, and flexibility. However, a routine called FragShield is misleading and dangerous to your system as now implemented. It pops up to encourage you to enlarge two critical areas on your hard drive, without explaining the consequences. It enables you to expand and defragment both your Paging files and Master File Table, a most valuable feature, but the dialog boxes are poorly written. Worse, only at the end of a help file is the warning that you can't reduce the size of your MFT without reformatting your drive. The carelessness of the company has brought my 80 GB system hard drive to its knees with an MFT of 10 Gigabytes! Now my defragmentation and backups take hours instead of minutes. If I had chosen the largest *recommended* MFT size, my hard drive would have been inoperable! Here was their response, which did not address all of the perils of the FragShield program:

"...The FragShield configuration dialog clearly states "Configure the MFT for the following number of files...". Also, mentions "Recommended MFT size: xxx,xxx file records...". However, I do realize that it could be a problem for certain users and could be misunderstood. I have made a suggestion to the development team regarding this so it could be implemented in the next release.

As far as giving you a solution to your large MFT, the only thing you can do is a format of your HD. There is no work-around that could be done to get your MFT to a smaller size unless you reformat your HD.

Best Regards, [name withheld]..."

I cannot recommend software that so carelessly recks a computer. If they indicate that the needed fixes to FragShield are complete on their website, then by all means get the product.

The purpose of Diskeeper (DK) and other "defragging" programs should be to think about the placement of data sectors on a disk drive, and organize the placement so that groups of sectors that are likely to be accessed at the same time are placed as "closely" as possible to one another on the disk. "Closeness" of sectors on a disk is not a terribly simple property to define, since three positioning coordinates (Cylinder, Head, and Sector on track) are involved, each of which has ramifications on access time which are somewhat different from one another in nature. But for the most part, it suffices to work under the assumption that sectors are "closer" to one another if their Linear Block Addresses (LBAs) are numerically closer to one another. If a sector with an LBA address of N has just been accessed, then the sector with LBA address N+1 can be accessed much faster -- perhaps a thousand times faster -- than sectors elsewhere on the disk. Thus, if we intend to access a whole file at one time, it is best if the sectors that comprise that file occupy LBA addresses N, N+1, N+2, N+3, etc., on the disk drive, where N is the LBA address of the first sector of the file. When the sectors of a file are in that relationship, the file is said to be defraggmented. Most "defraggers" consider it their "job" to reorganize data sectors on a disk so all files on the disk are defraggmented.

But their are other goals. For example, if I want to access the file a\b\c\d\e\f\g\afile.txt (where a,b,c,d,e,f and g are directories), then sectors which implement the directories a, b, c, d, e, f, and g must be accessed as part of the process of locating the afile.txt file, in addition to actually accessing the sectors of the afile.txt file itself. Generally, in fact, the positioning of directory sectors is more important that the placement of file sectors, because each directory sector is in the access path to not just one file, but many files, or perhaps many, many, many files as we look at the directories that are closer to top of the directory tree. Defraggers that do "directory consolidation" are generally (but not always) defraggers that recognized in some measure the importance of directory sector placement, and try to do placement activities which improve directory access performance.

There are other "defragmenting" goals as well. Once defragmented, a file remains defragmented unless it is updated. If sectors that are essentially "read only" (sectors of executable binary modules, for example) are split off in an area away from files sectors that are updated frequently, the entire "read only" area requires relatively little activity during subsequent defragging runs, meaning that subsequent defragging activity will be confined to the smaller portion of the disk where the heavily updated files reside. This, and related effects, will mean that subsequent defragmentation "runs" will be significantly faster.

Diskeeper corporation, generally, has been very slow to recognize *any* of the secondary sector placement goals for sectors, such as "directory consolidation," or the "splitting off" of files which are mostly "read only." (DK has had an offline directory consolidation function for some time, but, if one reads their discussion about it, one finds that they consider the function significant for rather the wrong reason -- namely, to reduce free space fragmentation, rather than improve directory access performance. Unsurprisingly, therefore, DK's choice of directory consolidation location ends up being probably the worst possible choice.) With the introduction of "I-FAAST," DK version 10 (in 2005) is the first version of Diskeeper that gives noticable consideration to any sector placement goal over and above simply defragmenting files and defragmenting free space. Other products, such as Raxco's PerfectDisk, were working on other aspects of sector placement clear back in 2000 and before.

Diskeeper claims to have 95% "corporate" market share, and I believe that is probably true. They have focused on many things important to corporations, especially remote installation and administration of their Diskeeper products. Such function may be crucial to large corporations, but means little to home users that are not running farms of servers. Diskeeper's reliability record, in terms of avoiding data corruption of loss, has been very good.

I have versions 1, 4, 5, 5.3, 6, 6 2nd edition, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 (2007) and 13(?)(2009) of Diskeeper, all acquired as shrink-wrapped and new (but many acquired at low prices, at places such as swap meets, Ebay, or dissolution of companies that have gone belly up). I have watched the company's activities over a long period. The improvements between successive versions have generally been minimal, with many releases amounting to no more than allowing the product to run on a new release of Windows. Considering that one is very often merely 99% re-buying what one has previously bought and paid for, upgrade pricing has not been generous by any means. The DK products seem invariably to have truly minimal lifetimes -- for example, DK would have us buy 5 DK retail versions (7,8,9,10,11) over a period (2001-2007) where Microsoft enhanced it's XP product *far* more than Diskeeper corp. enhanced its DK product, but Microsoft did so with service packs that were provided free of charge to the user. When one reads DK's unfailing web site hoopla about "improvements" from version to version, old functionality as often as not is described as "new," and virtually no claimed "performance improvements" that would be measurable have been quantified.

Particularly starting with about version 10, what I sense is a company accelerating downhill, from a customer benefit perspective. DK now seems mostly interested in monetizing their dominant position, and seems much less interested in serving their customers. The later property of the company is particularly evidenced by their withdrawal of the (already written and debugged, previously available) product patch update files from their web site, for older (but still perfectly usable and in-use) versions of their products. This cannot be seen as anything other than an attempt to obsolete their older released prematurely, forcing users into new purchases.

There is bad news on other fronts as well. In the past, one of DK's better features (IMO), relative to other venders, was their detailed "map" display of the layout and fragmentation status of a disk. In DK version 9, DK introduced a then optional alternative "performance map" to be used in preference to their previous fragmentation map. This was basically a map which displayed fragmented files as though they were non-fragmented, when DK "determined" that the fragmentation of some fragmented files "didn't matter much." To me, this was kind of a thinly disguised attempt to make DK look like it was doing a better defraggmentation job than it was.

In DK version 10, the disk map gets much, much worse. The map no longer differentiates between sectors associated with directories and those associated with files. (!!!) Reports also no longer differentiate between file and directory sector statistics. This makes the map "look smoother," but it really means that the map tells you much, much, much less, and in particular hides information about the placement of directory sectors, relative to both other directory sectors, relative to the MFT, and relative to free space. With version 10, *none* of the report data available from DK helps in evaluating when defragging would be useful for directory consolidation reasons. The new "map" really exemplifies the fact that DK doesn't really seem to understand the value of any sector placement objectives, other than simple fragmentation of files.

Version 10 introduced "I-FAAST," which is the first sign that DK has actually noticed that sector placement considerations, over and above simple file defragmentation considerations, are important. Good for DK, I suppose, even if they are 5+ years later than other vendors in starting to think about this. Bad for DK, in that you have to pay extra for function of this kind, even though it is include in the "standard" versions of most competing products (for the non-Server DK product, you must opt for the "Premier" edition, for another $50 or so). And bad for DK, because from reviews that I have read that have made attempts to measure the I-FAAST "improvement," reviewers are largely reporting a zero or negative "improvement," relative to the standard Windows XP defragger. And bad for DK, in that Diskeeper's description of what I-FAAST actually does is virtually entirely buzzword gobbledygook which identifies no clear goal, strategy, or plan. Until there is evidence to the contrary, I have to simply regard I-FAAST as handwaving and marketing hype. And also bad for DK, according to reports, since DK 10 removes the standard Windows defragger (perhaps because they don't want people to be able to make a comparison), with some people reporting that they had to reinstall Windows to get it back.

Version 10 is also the last DK version that does not include "activation." This is relevant for version 10 buyers, because for thoughtful people who reject activation, it means that DK 10 looses all of its value as a "trade in" for subsequent versions. For those unfamiliar with "activation," it is a mechanism whereby DK (11 and later) take a "fingerprint" of your machine, "phones home" to DK headquarters via the internet to record that fingerprint, and then DK (11 and later) refuses to (re)install a given copy (e.g., a given serial number) of itself, unless DK "thinks" that the fingerprint matches the fingerprint previously sent home. One problem with this is that "fingerprinting" procedure is less that perfect, and "fingerprints" often don't match if any changes have been made to the machine, even when the fingerprint should match by any reasonable measure (e.g., it is essentially the same machine). In addition to "fingerprint" failures, activation is a guarantee that a company's software **will** fail to be of further use if the company goes out of business, and will almost surely also fail if the company is acquired by another. Neither of these events are infrequent occurrences in this industry. And, the company's move to withdraw even simple patch download support for older products doesn't really bode well as to how long we can expect (re)activation for a given product version to continue to be "supported" by the company.

The bottom line is that "activation" is really a **major** failure mechanism for a product, which adds nothing that benefits the user, and which will likely ultimately cause the product to fail completely. In my mind, activation mostly shows that a corporation has little regard for really insuring product value for its paying customers, and has instead become preoccupied and focused on a war that it is having with "non-paying customers." My experience with activation and other copy protection mechanisms is that they have almost invariably caused the premature demise for software that I would have otherwise continued to use. So I downgrade the value of any software using activation by about a factor of 5, before I even consider buying it.

Another really negative aspect of software using activation, for me at least, is that is makes me very hesitant to make changes that I might otherwise make to hardware in my machine, for fear of causing any "activated" software that I might own to "break." In my view, it is really unacceptable for software to be interfering with my freedom of action in this way.

In considering useful "defrag" function that DK doesn't do (but that *most* other defrag products also don't do), I think there are two defrag products that should be mentioned. The UltimateDefrag product claims an ability to consolidate directories in an area right in front of the MFT, which seems to me to be the best location to consolidate directories. This seems to be a somewhat unique capability within the industry. But, I looked at UltimateDefrag some, and am rather nervous about it, because the company seems to have made no plan or provisions whatsoever for maintenance updates. Another defragger also stands out as having a unique capability that some may be interested in, and that is Paragon's "Total Defrag." Although I wouldn't suggest Total Defrag as a complete defrag solution, it is as far I know the only defragger on the market that will consolidate MFT entries together at the beginning of the MFT (and will also reduce the size of the MFT, if that is something that the user wishes to do). But I haven't actually tested Total Defrag, so I can't give it an unqualified recommendation.

Here is my list of Pros and Cons for DK 10, and for Diskeeper corporation as a vendor:

Agnostic:

1. Scheduling functions. I'm happy just doing defrag evaluations and runs when I feel like doing them, so I've made no attempt to evaluate the scheduling function of any defragger, including DK.

Pros:

1. DK seems to have a good record with respect to avoiding unintended data destruction. I don't know that any others are bad, but DK does seem to be verifiably good on this score.

2. Good attention to administration issues, for people running server farms and such.

3. Probably somewhat faster at defragging than most (but probably at the cost of a poorer job).

4. Diskeeper corporations general movement, away from real customer value, and towards higher prices and monetization of their dominant market position, seems to have resulted in quite number of newer players in the defragmentation software market. Several of them like they are quite good, and there are now certainly better choices available than there were for many years.

Cons:

1. Relatively poor performance of defragged systems. This is due to DK paying little or no attention to any sector placement issue other than simple file defragmentation, unless one buys into more expensive "editions," such as "premium" or server editions. Even then, the new "I-FAAST technology" which ostensibly addresses this issue seems to be not at all ready for prime time.

2. I found the GUI user interface to be a significant step backwards. The interface is very verbose, which could be good, but in this case it is verbose to degree which rather condescending and actually becomes something of a burden (example: a "Help" button is not simply "Help," but rather a mini-paragraph: "View information about using Diskeeper and where to get further assistence"). As one navigates, the currently "dominant" option group is generally overly expanded in use of screen space, to the point where the other options groups become non-obvious and hard to find, until one gets use to the scheme. In addition, the choice of icons on the toolbar borders on insane -- all but one of them are round, blue, about the same size, and based on a "picture" of the same blue "disk." They are relatively hard to distinquish from one another, and really give minimal visual clues as to what they are about.

3. When requested for the system partition (C:), boot-time defragmentation simply did not occur. This problem has been present for several DK releases (since version 7 at least), and seems to be due to DK not being able to achieve exclusive control of C: at boot time (probably because of some other app that starts some process at boot time). With an earlier release of DK, I managed to get boot-time defragmentation to run by deleting Symantec's "Ghost" application, and perhaps that would have worked with DK 10 as well (I didn't try), but I have to give DK a zero here for not providing even a glimmer of help or information (not even a log file entry) that would help get the problem resolved.

4. DK previously has had a much better than average "disk map" display than other vendors. In version 10, this changed, and DK 10's "disk map" is now worse (lacking of useful information, including the lack of some of the information required to determine when defragging would be useful) than any other defragger that I know of.

5. Poor directory consolation. Although newer versions (unlike version 4.0 running on NT) move directories during online operations as required for purposes of consolidating free space, directories themselves are *consolidated* only via a boot-time procedure. This procedure consolidates them at the beginning of the disk, which is almost an optimally bad location (since new directories will generally be allocated in free space, and directories at the beginning of the disk will then be placed about as far away from new directories as would be possible under any arrangement).

In contrast, for example, PerfectDisk 7.0 (2005) consolidates directories at the beginning of the free space area, which is a significantly better choice. And it does so in the course of normal online defragmentation runs.

Some of the newer players are said to do even better. For example, UltimateDefrag claims to consolidate directories at the beginning of the MFT, which is probably the best choice (since much of the directory structure is within the MFT).

6. DK has a tendency to introduce silly and unnecessary dependencies that cause the DK products to "break" prematurely. I indicated earlier DK versions invariably break with new releases of Windows. Another example of this kind of thing is DK's ill-advised wedding of its products to the Microsoft Management Console (MMC). This was IMO bad functionally to begin with, because the MMC integration stole critical screen space from the DK display, which diminished the screen space available for the disk map display. But, the MMC dependency also causes virtually all older versions of DK to "break" at least somewhat with service pack 3 for XP, in which Microsoft updated the MMC in some way. Some other venders *allow* their products to run under the MMC, but most seem sensible enough not to require that their products run there. But, DK 10 is at least not incompatiable with the SP3 MMC in the same way that earlier versions were.

7. Poor maintenance and update policies. DK now removes updates from its WEB site, after a product is a few years old. Discounts for new versions are small, and are usually zero if you so much as try to skip a single version.

8. Going forward from version 10, "product activation" IMO makes DK a non-starter. IMO, this reduces the "trade in" value of DK 10 to zero.

I like to keep my computer well maintained to prevent the usual slow down over time.

This is one of several essential programs that every PC requires.

I recommend it highly.

I am so happy that I purchased Diskeeper 10. It runs in the background and I am totally defragged in 27 minutes instead of 3 to 4 hours with other products that I used. The 'Set It and Forget It' feature is fantastic. It does just that - you set it up as to when you may want to defrag or set it at 'continuous' and it does it while you work. Your first defrag will take awhile but thereafter its' a breeze. Don't be put off by FragShield. I called Diskeeper after reading the problem that one reviewer had and they fully explained what it was and said if I decide to use it and am not sure of what to do, just call them back. You can also follow the procedure outlined by Scott L. Sutherland, one of the other reviewers.

I like the features of this program and the way it does not need to be run manually, but can run in the backround at a scheduled time. It is an efficient time saving way to defrag and keep files working properly.

I am a software tech (28 years).
PRINT THIS COMPLEX PROCEDURE OUT!- Well worth the trouble, and fun (for me)!

Pre note!- The other reviewer that had trouble with the MFT, should have done it "exactly" by my following procedure (never had any problems)!

DK (DisKeeper Pro 10) PERFORMANCE GAINS ARE AWESOME!!!
I do have one complaint (kinda :o) ), with DK-
My old "maxed out" computer WAS getting slow, and I rationalized getting a fast new 64 bit computer (DK works with 64 bit, also)! I tested DK as a last resort?
Now my old computer does !EVERYTHING SOOO FAST!!!
I can now wait for the new Intel Conroe CPU chip, and prices to go down...!-
I recommend the High-End... "DELL's are Swell" (Gold Support only!), for most users!

DK is a VERY advanced, program that runs automatically (lowest priority), only when the computer is idle.
Once set it automatically defrags your computer (set and forget).
DK's Manual defrags... are much faster than XP's (once initially setup properly)!
ALL applications, start & run SO MUCH FASTER!!!

I tested... with DK for several weeks, to figure out the optimum install/settings...!
I'll share these secrets with you, for only $69.95 + S&H (just funning you!)!

IMPORTANT NOTES!-
a. No matter what you are doing...! ALWAYS wait for your HD (Hard Drive) light to stop blinking!
b. Always RESTART, after EVERY install/uninstall... (XP loves restarts!)!
1. Just because ANY application... says that it is finished/Restart Now...- it has not written the final values to the registry... yet! SLOW DOWN, and you'll se the HD light blink!
c. Some of these DK processes are VERY VERY slow (only initially).
Whatever you do, don't interrupt... (or do anything else...!) during ANY of them!
BE VERY PATIENT, or you'll be sorry!
d. Start this DK procedure... EARLY (2 hrs+, first time only), then FAST & automatic defrags...!

~~~
DK Procedure...-

1. Backup your "critical..." files... to an external source (I didn't have any problems (6 computers), but you never know!?)).
a. I use Acronis 9, "full image backup", to a WD external HD. Acronis 9 is fast & works GREAT for me & my clients (See my amazon.com... review, for details...!)!

2. DISABLE/Never...!- any screensavers, standby, hibernate, Turn Off monitor/disk, battery mode, ...!
a. Disable/uninstall... Norton GoBack, and Norton Ghost (incompatible!)!!!

3. Do an XP disk error check/chkdsk... (all drives), restart again.
a. Defrag & restart, on C drive only.

4. Install DK in "Startup Groups Disabled" mode (for that matter- Use this for ALL program installs. Ever see that MS warning to disable all running pgms? This is the easier/safe way!)-
a. Start, Run, put " msconfig " in box, Selective Startup, remove check from " Load Startup Items " (You may have to open the Startup folder, and check your 3d party firewall, only?), Apply, Close, Restart Now, OK, Cancel.

5. Now go back into Normal Startup.
a. Start, Run, " msconfig ", dot in "Normal Startup", Apply, Close, restart. Restart twice.
1. Log off internet, if not already.

6. Open DK..., and optimize the size of your MFT's (Master File Table index's).
a. Click on the 3 colored gears icon, Frag Shield..., Edit, dots... in configure MFT- !NEVER! use their HUGE optimal recommendations- custom size= 100,000 MAX (you can add later if close..., but have to reformat HD to subtract)!
Note!- NEVER optimize MFT in "Normal Startup" mode, or you'll be sorry!
1. This took an hour+ on my 40gig HD laptop, and 45 min+ on my 3ghz, 2x40gig HD desktop!
2. Slow line, after line, of stars..., is NORMAL!
3. Note from DK!- MFT optimizing can take HOURS on large volumes! Do not interrupt...!
Whatever you do, don't interrupt, or do ANYTHING else..., during ALL DK operations...!
b. Restart... (always wait for HD lights!).

7. Now you MUST do a Boot Defrag, for new MFT settings to take effect (Only once, after any MFT change (External HD... too).
a. Click the icon to the left of the 3 gear icon, "on next manual reboot", checks in all boxes...
Restart...

8. Now you need to do a manual I-FAAST, to optimize your files starting order (WOW!).
(Somewhere in here it tells you what % performance will be gained by...- No matter what %, DO IT!)
a. Highlight C drive, click on the I-FAAST icon (2 to the left of 3 gear icon). Set day/times to run NOW...
b. This will automatically run, only while you are idle!
Close DK, do nothing (idle) & wait for 10 minutes.
c. Highlight C drive, and Defragment (Defrag should be slower, this time. Wait 30 seconds for registry..., after ALL defrags)!
Restart.
d. Open DK, highlight & defrag all your slave HD's.
Restart.

9. Open DK, highlight C, and click on "Set it and Forget it" (lower left column).
a. Click on options 1, 3 & 4 (skip 2).
Put checks in enable boxes..., set times... ( I set #4 (I-FAAST smart placement defrag), day/times... to daily... (DK learning curve- just keeps getting faster!).
Restart.
DONE!

ENJOY!
Scott :o)