"Putting all the free space into a single chunk is only useful for some purposes-for very large files," he says.Īccording to Raxco CEO Bob Nolan, if you're talking about a workstation with a small hard drive that's half empty and all you're concerned about is data, then any product will defragment it. If you defragment only data on a disk that's nearing capacity and then save a file that's bigger than any available chunk of contiguous free space, the operating system will have to fragment the new file right from the get-go.īut Diskeeper product manager Michael Materie claims that splitting files into two to three fragments is not a problem in most cases. ![]() Defragmentation time isn't the only trade-off, however. PerfectDisk tackles both but takes significantly more time as it unifies free space and consolidates files. Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Disk Defragmenter focuses only on areas with data.ĭiskeeper deliberately chooses to save processing time by not defragmenting free space. However, defragmenting free space takes extra time. Free space on a disk gets fragmented over time, just as space containing data does. Raxco also touts PerfectDisk's ability to defragment all free space as well as areas containing data. Indeed, our tests show that Diskeeper does run faster, making daily use less cumbersome, while PerfectDisk is more thorough. Raxco claims that its PerfectDisk does a more thorough job in a single pass, can operate on disks with less free space and offers powerful analysis tools. It advocates automated, daily defragmentation as standard maintenance. Diskeeper, the 800-pound gorilla in the market, advertises ease of use and the simplicity of remote, network-based administration. in Burbank, Calif., have very different views of storage optimization. in Gaithersburg, Md., and Diskeeper Corp. However, defragmenters still improve performance, especially for machines that multitask.Īlso, while both PCs and servers with direct-attached storage can benefit from defragmentation, the process is less useful for storage arrays, which split data over multiple disks and use different principles for organizing data storage (see the QuickStudy on RAID, QuickLink a7330). Because NTFS volumes are indexed by a master file table distributed across the drive, they derive less benefit from defragmentation than NTFS's predecessor, FAT-32. Both the desktop and server versions of Windows use NT File System. The problem of disk defragmentation has been muted somewhat by the evolution of the Windows file system. But it's only after the defragmentation utility has completed a pass on the logical volume that the disk drive subsystem (whether Fibre Channel, iSCSI, ATA or Serial ATA) uses that information to organize data stored on the physical disk platters. They also improve performance by positioning files at specific locations within the directory in order to speed up tasks such as booting and directory access. These utilities perform a similar operation at the volume level. Instead, the tools reviewed here-PerfectDisk 7, Diskeeper 9 and the Disk Defragmenter utility included with Windows XP-all defragment logical hard drives (or volumes) created by the operating system's file system. However, no disk utility on the market does that. ![]() That process is called physical defragmentation. ![]() The process, a little like putting together a jigsaw puzzle, speeds up disk performance by allowing the drive's heads to read an entire file without having to jump back to the drive index for more lookups. The fragments are moved around, like the pieces in a shell game, so that each file occupies a unified, contiguous chunk of real estate on the hard drive. Most people think of disk defragmentation as a process that involves gathering and reordering pieces of data files that have been scattered on a hard drive.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |