Diskeeper 12

[christer12]

Does anyone have experience with diskeeper? Just got me a Samsung SSD 840 PRO, but are afraid the software will do no harm.

[Tsavo]

Originally Posted by christer12

Does anyone have experience with diskeeper? Just got me a Samsung SSD 840 PRO, but are afraid the software will do no harm.

No harm? If you want harm, smack the drive with a hammer.

Otherwise, built-in OS defrag is just fine, just do NOT run it on the SSD.

[kleinkinstein]

Defragging an ssd is not smart.

[Nothinman]

Defragging is a waste of time, doing it on an SSD about 1000x more so.

[christer12]

They advertise with HyperFast® solid state drive optimizer, but improve that the SSD?

Is solid state drive optimization safe?

[Tsavo]

Not at all needed.

[christer12]

Samsung SSD Magician has it?

[Nothinman]

Optimization is a generic term, you need to figure out exactly what they're doing to determine the effects it would have good or bad. Chances are they're negligible, just like the effects of defragging a spinning driver.

[christer12]

But you do not think that they can advertise something that could damage my ssd?

[Nothinman]

Usually I would say not, but too many early gen SSDs had firmware that caused them to report 0 size and require an RMA after certain operations so I dunno. I sure as hell wouldn't run their software.

[christer12]

On youtube they seem very convincing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hznCSqb4Mzg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfYkJoqfG-k

And this white paper:

http://downloads.diskeeper.com/pdf/HyperFast.pdf

[WilliamM2]

Even if it doesn't harm the drive, how much could it possibly improve performance?

Unless you are still running XP, and then it will add trim support. But for 7 or 8, waste of time and money.

[christer12]

It will reduce I/O, but they have not so much evidence.
Possibly it can improve the life of the SSD, but need some experience from others.

[AlexKlein]

Hi christer12,

Regardless of the type of storage you're using, if you use Windows there will still be underlying issues.

Here's a blog post I wrote recently on Windows 8 that explains why Diskeeper is still necessary - http://www.condusiv.com/blog/post/20...-Released.aspx

SSDs are fast, but they are not instantaneous. The Windows NTFS file system does not behave any differently because the underlying storage is a SSD verses a HDD and therefore performance issues still occur. You're right though Tsavo - a SSD needs to be handled differently then a HDD when it comes to performance optimization. Our HyperFast technology is specially designed for SSDs and includes TRIM to safely speed up application data response time and improve the overall lifespan of the SSD.

-Alex
Social Media Manager
Condusiv Technologies

[christer12]

But why have Diskeeper integrated TRIM? Windows 8 have TRIM integrated too? Should I enable it in Diskeeper. I have Windows 8.

And why is Diskeeper so slow to optimize my SSD? It takes days..

[Cerb]

Scale-free graphs! I love those things! They are so informative! A vendor's test, without disclosure of exactly how the test operates is pretty useless, too.

NTFS is far from perfect, and Windows is far from perfect. But it's gotten better, and you generally don't have to worry.

Hell, I left my spinner for almost 4 months w/o a defrag (idle activity annoys me to no end), and I had only a handful of files flagged as problematic. I've even been lazily leaving it with only 5-10% free space.

Fragmentation, both in NV storage and RAM, is real, but the problem is that it is difficult to predict. There are strategies for minimizing it, and dealing it is after the fact, but it occurs like it does because the OS can't know what files will be edited, or how. Common patterns can be planned for (appending to the end, FI), but you really need to handle it after the fact, in most cases.

There are pathological cases. But, they are also corner cases. The common case is that it doesn't really matter.

Just use the drive, leave some free space, and don't fret over it. If it's 2% slower one day than it could have been if it had been defragged, are you even going to notice? Remember that you're using a drive that can handle IOPS in the tens of thousands--figure ~200 pure 4K random per screen refresh on a bad day (steady state, QD 1-2). Its ability to perform GC in a timely manner matters 100x more to performance than NTFS issues.

[Nothinman]

Originally Posted by Cerb

Scale-free graphs! I love those things! They are so informative! A vendor's test, without disclosure of exactly how the test operates is pretty useless, too.

NTFS is far from perfect, and Windows is far from perfect. But it's gotten better, and you generally don't have to worry.

Hell, I left my spinner for almost 4 months w/o a defrag (idle activity annoys me to no end), and I had only a handful of files flagged as problematic. I've even been lazily leaving it with only 5-10% free space.

Fragmentation, both in NV storage and RAM, is real, but the problem is that it is difficult to predict. There are strategies for minimizing it, and dealing it is after the fact, but it occurs like it does because the OS can't know what files will be edited, or how. Common patterns can be planned for (appending to the end, FI), but you really need to handle it after the fact, in most cases.

There are pathological cases. But, they are also corner cases. The common case is that it doesn't really matter.

Just use the drive, leave some free space, and don't fret over it. If it's 2% slower one day than it could have been if it had been defragged, are you even going to notice? Remember that you're using a drive that can handle IOPS in the tends of thousands--figure ~200 pure 4K random per screen refresh on a bad day (steady state, QD 1-2). Its ability to perform GC in a timely manner matters 100x more to performance than NTFS issues.

Exactly. The time spent in this thread is likely more than would be saved by any snakeoil "optimization" program.

[AlexKlein]

Originally Posted by Cerb

Scale-free graphs! I love those things! They are so informative! A vendor's test, without disclosure of exactly how the test operates is pretty useless, too.

NTFS is far from perfect, and Windows is far from perfect. But it's gotten better, and you generally don't have to worry.

Hell, I left my spinner for almost 4 months w/o a defrag (idle activity annoys me to no end), and I had only a handful of files flagged as problematic. I've even been lazily leaving it with only 5-10% free space.

Fragmentation, both in NV storage and RAM, is real, but the problem is that it is difficult to predict. There are strategies for minimizing it, and dealing it is after the fact, but it occurs like it does because the OS can't know what files will be edited, or how. Common patterns can be planned for (appending to the end, FI), but you really need to handle it after the fact, in most cases.

There are pathological cases. But, they are also corner cases. The common case is that it doesn't really matter.

Just use the drive, leave some free space, and don't fret over it. If it's 2% slower one day than it could have been if it had been defragged, are you even going to notice? Remember that you're using a drive that can handle IOPS in the tens of thousands--figure ~200 pure 4K random per screen refresh on a bad day (steady state, QD 1-2). Its ability to perform GC in a timely manner matters 100x more to performance than NTFS issues.

Hi Cerb,

1. The scale-free graphs was meant to symbolize the dramatic difference between the two. Here's a different set of graphs that let the numbers do the talking and shows how Diskeeper decreases SSD wear and thus improves it's lifespan - http://www.condusiv.com/blog/post/20...nd-Defrag.aspx

2. Emerging technologies, such as that in our new V-locity 4 (acceleration software for virtual environments), actually allow us to predict file usage in order to take preventative measures before performance is impacted.

3. The NTFS file system is basically the same as it's always been. Windows naturally writes files in an unorganized fashion and therefore the same holds true when you go back and read these files.

Say you are saving a 10MB file. In it's natural course of action, Windows will attempt to save this file in the first block of free space it comes across - even if the block is only 500KB in size! This means that Windows will continuing looking for other blocks of free space - breaking the file into many pieces on it's quest to get the entire file saved to the storage.

Now when Windows goes back to read this file, it generates what's called an "I/O request" to complete the action - and each of these I/O requests takes a measurable amount of time. For every piece of the file that's retrieved, an additional I/O request needs to be generated - and they add up.

Diskeeper ensures that files are written to the storage sequentially in one block of free space, so that it only takes one single I/O requests to circle back and read that file later.

If you hardly use your computer, you're right - the numbers won't be that impressive. But if you use your computer on a daily basis, I challenge you to install Diskeeper trialware and see for yourself. Please report back to us your findings.

-Alex
Social Media Manager
Condusiv Technologies

[Cerb]

In the case that a file's size is unknown when it must be written, Windows indeed will basically not worry about where it puts it. However, for files, and appended data, of known size, that's not much of an issue, and it's fairly good about placing them mostly contiguously.

It's not that I don't use my computer, but that I have enough RAM that it rarely has to do any emergency I/O flushing, and I'm rarely writing streams of unknown size (OTOH, Linux FSes have to be good about fragmentation, because streams of unknown length are the norm).

I've seen what happens to PCs with Quicken and Drake, FI, and it's just . They're just evil, combined with NTFS/Windows. Many months ago, I set a client's computer to defrag nightly, just after the daily backup, because it just got so bad so quickly (when said client upgrades, they will get an SSD). I'm not denying that there are cases where it can help. Windows' internal tweaking for the initial I/O, and then the Windows defragger, are intended to be good enough solution to a wide enough audience, and also be as out of the way as possible. Some people won't give the defragger time to run, some people will outpace it...but others it's fine for, or they just don't need it much. It's quite possible to write GBs/day, and not have bad fragmentation in the first place, today, and light fragmentation performance is almost as good as contiguous, thanks to drive makers and MS having worked on it.

[Nothinman]

Originally Posted by Cerb

In the case that a file's size is unknown when it must be written, Windows indeed will basically not worry about where it puts it. However, for files, and appended data, of known size, that's not much of an issue, and it's fairly good about placing them mostly contiguously.

It's not that I don't use my computer, but that I have enough RAM that it rarely has to do any emergency I/O flushing, and I'm rarely writing streams of unknown size (OTOH, Linux FSes have to be good about fragmentation, because streams of unknown length are the norm).

I've seen what happens to PCs with Quicken and Drake, FI, and it's just . They're just evil, combined with NTFS/Windows. Many months ago, I set a client's computer to defrag nightly, just after the daily backup, because it just got so bad so quickly (when said client upgrades, they will get an SSD). I'm not denying that there are cases where it can help. Windows' internal tweaking for the initial I/O, and then the Windows defragger, are intended to be good enough solution to a wide enough audience, and also be as out of the way as possible. Some people won't give the defragger time to run, some people will outpace it...but others it's fine for, or they just don't need it much. It's quite possible to write GBs/day, and not have bad fragmentation in the first place, today, and light fragmentation performance is almost as good as contiguous, thanks to drive makers and MS having worked on it.

I was under the impression that the NTFS driver has gotten smarter about initial placement and growth of files by at least doing things that most Linux filesystem drivers have been doing forever like leaving some padding at the end of files so that minor growth doesn't add fragmentation. Even if it's not gotten as smart as 20 year old Linux drivers, combined with the included defragger doing its thing automatically and silently it's still good enough as is for the vast majority of users.

I know it's not ideal, but if more developers would use the tools available to them (e.g. fallocate) this would be a lot less of an issue as well.

And quite frankly I tend to stay away from companies that change their name or get bought frequently. You can't build a brand that way so they're either running from something (e.g. old brand/reputation) or management is just confused and can't set any real direction.

[AlexKlein]

Check out this INDEPENDENT 3rd-party testing - http://downloads.condusiv.com/pdf/Op...skeeper-12.pdf

If you don't want to read through all of it, just check out page 17, which goes through a comparison.

Also, here's something from page 8 on the status of a system after a BRAND NEW Windows install:

After running the standard Windows installation process and applying numerous software updates to both the OS and user applications, openBench Labs was left with a system volume on our workstation that was severely
fragmented.

Specifically we were confronted with:

• A system volume with 2,026 fragmented files averaging five fragments per file.
• The most fragmented file had 906 fragments.
• Free space was fractured into 12,640 fragments with an average size of 296KB.
• The largest free space fragment was just 882MB.


-Alex
Social Media Manager
Condusiv Technologies

[pasca333]

Originally Posted by christer12

Does anyone have experience with diskeeper? Just got me a Samsung SSD 840 PRO, but are afraid the software will do no harm.

We have used Diskeeper since 2009 and been very satisfied with how it manages the defrag process. It clearly improves system performance.

We have had one setback with migration to Windows 8. Condusiv states that the product is "fully compliant" with Windows 8 Pro. We did not find that to be the case and spent three frustrating days following their helpdesk procedures. None worked. When we, in frustration, uninstalled our AV software completely and then reinstalled Diskeeper 12, all was fine. The software immediately began operation on what was a clean Windows 8 disk.

Our only problem now is to find an AV product that does not conflict. One of Condusiv's steps was to make certain that the AV/FW settings permitted Diskeeper to work without interference...which we had done without success. We are still attempting to pin down exactly what process in our AV application interferes with Diskeeper. When we discover it, we'll post.

[berryracer]

Originally Posted by pasca333

We have used Diskeeper since 2009 and been very satisfied with how it manages the defrag process. It clearly improves system performance.

We have had one setback with migration to Windows 8. Condusiv states that the product is "fully compliant" with Windows 8 Pro. We did not find that to be the case and spent three frustrating days following their helpdesk procedures. None worked. When we, in frustration, uninstalled our AV software completely and then reinstalled Diskeeper 12, all was fine. The software immediately began operation on what was a clean Windows 8 disk.

Our only problem now is to find an AV product that does not conflict. One of Condusiv's steps was to make certain that the AV/FW settings permitted Diskeeper to work without interference...which we had done without success. We are still attempting to pin down exactly what process in our AV application interferes with Diskeeper. When we discover it, we'll post.

You sound like you work for Diskeeper you spammer

[ShawnD1]

Originally Posted by Nothinman

Defragging is a waste of time, doing it on an SSD about 1000x more so.

It seems to help when dealing with extremely fragmented drives. My mom's computer had brutal hard drive lag until I installed Smart Defrag and had it defrag every time the computer went idle.

Solid state drives should not be defragged.

[Gintaras]

Originally Posted by AlexKlein

Check out this INDEPENDENT 3rd-party testing - http://downloads.condusiv.com/pdf/Op...skeeper-12.pdf

If you don't want to read through all of it, just check out page 17, which goes through a comparison.

Also, here's something from page 8 on the status of a system after a BRAND NEW Windows install:

After running the standard Windows installation process and applying numerous software updates to both the OS and user applications, openBench Labs was left with a system volume on our workstation that was severely
fragmented.

Specifically we were confronted with:

• A system volume with 2,026 fragmented files averaging five fragments per file.
• The most fragmented file had 906 fragments.
• Free space was fractured into 12,640 fragments with an average size of 296KB.
• The largest free space fragment was just 882MB.


-Alex
Social Media Manager
Condusiv Technologies

I like O&O Defrag, I think, I have ver. 11 Pro....
Defrag is needed...even today's HDD are fast, but page file gets clogged....and it's good to keep other data-files in order...