Using Diskeeper 2011
When you launch Diskeeper 2011 you will see the What’s New dialog box – you can switch this off otherwise it will display each time and pretty soon you will be familiar with Diskeeper!
The next thing you will see is the System Performance Report – this shows a lot of information, including configuration information and also results.
Diskeeper will then check for updates.
If you close the report you will be presented with the main dashboard. There is a lot of information here, and you have to scroll down to see it all.
The Dashboard report area is only a small part of the screen, which can make it a little difficult and frustrating at times to see everything you want to see, but it is all there.
There are some specific SSD elements that are added to Diskeeper 2011 when you have Hyperfast.
Excellent review! There are some other points to keep in mind though.
When your PC attempts to write a new file (when you save a file after editing, create a new Word or Excel file, or download a new video or song, etc. and try to save it), the disk rarely has enough contiguous free space on it so the file will be broken into pieces, filling in the available free space.
This is standard practice and believe it or not, some files can be broken into tens of thousands of pieces this way.
Later, when you access the file (play the song or video, open the spreadsheet to update it, edit your Word document, etc.) your hard drive needs to find each of those possibly 10,000 or more pieces and piece these together so the file can be used (usually it goes into RAM where it can be quickly accessed while it is open or to a reserved space on the disk if RAM is all used up).
Now look at what just happened here.
IT specialists look at each of these actions as an”I/O”, which means “In/Out”.
The request is made to open or save a file(In) and the action is executed (OUT). You ask for a file (IN and you get the file on your monitor to read (OUT).
Ideally, you should have one or two I/Os to access the file, and one or two to save it (you request it be saved (IN) and it gets saved (OUT). And that is pretty much what would happen if the disk were not fragmented.
However, if you save the file (IN) and then the PC has to break the file into say 1,000 pieces, it first must catalog each piece so it knows where to find it, and then write it to those locations on the disk.
We now suddenly have well over 2,000 I/Os (save request = 1, breaking it up = 1 — probably more — logging where each piece will be = 1,000 if the file is broken into 1,000 pieces, and we haven’t even saved the file yet! Writing EACH of the pieces to the various locations on the disk = over 1,000, completing the task = 1). Now the file is finally saved.
Now most of those I/Os translate into disk motion, that is, the disk has to spin and the head has to go the designated spot and write the portion of the file that will fit on that empty space.
And then, when you later want to access that file, the disk will go through at least 1,000 I/Os to locate the file bits, read each piece, assemble them and finally present the file in a usable format.
And this happens to each file that is saved and then read.
Now the disk is mechanical, so do you see that it’s more than just keeping the files neat and easy to find?
Keeping the disks defragmented continually means A LOT less disk use, which means less wear, which means the disks will also last longer.
And since Diskeeper 2011 now prevents most fragmentation, even more I/Os are saved when the files are written, since they now for the most part will not be written in pieces.
Drastically less I/Os to write them and drastically reduced I/Os to find the files.
This is why Diskeeper is used by more Fortune 500 companies world-wide than any other defrag program around. Professional IT Managers who oversee and maintain large sites with thousands of computers will only use Diskeeper as they know it helps their disks last a lot longer.
Sorry for the long comment — I hope this is useful info for you and your readers. 🙂
thanks Bill – thats really useful additional information.
FYI TYPO
http://usingwindowshomeserver.com/2011/04/05/review-of-diskeeper-2011-professional-with-hyperfast/
Efficient Mode is available in all Diskeeper 2011 editions expect for Home edition.
s/b except
thanks Dan – I have updated it. It was taken directly from their documentation 🙂