Diskeeper Pro 2007 vs. Perfect Disk 8

[stoneysilence]

Which do you recommend or is there a better 3rd option?

I have tried 30 day demo of Diskeeper Pro Premier ($100 yuck, Pro is $70) and it was alright. Not really sure it sped things up or not. Has resident program that defrags as you work so it could slow system down a bit. Not sure if the Pro Premier is worth it just for the added ability of I-FAAST 2.0. Not sure if it helps a gamer at all. So probably if I bought this it would be only the Pro version.

Currently using Perfectdisk 8 demo. Did seem to speed things up so far but still early in the testing to know (day 1 of the 30 day trial). Kinda leaning toward Perfectdisk because it is cheaper ($40). The only thing against Perfectdisk is last time I used it, it killed my HD. Ran it once and then my HD croaked (brand new too. sad ). But they (Tech support) said the HD was bad in the first place and Perfectdisk just pushed it over the edge. Which makes sense to me so not too hard of feelings against it.

Any opinions?

 

[Rottie]

Diskeeper Pro Premier 2007 does work very well I don't have any problems so I can't say anything at this time.

 

[Capitalizt]

Perfect Disk degragments the drive PERFECTLY (no pun intended)

Do an entire drive defrag with PD, then open up the Windows defragmenter and analyze the drive. Mine shows a solid line of blue with no gaps at all. In other words.. 0.00% fragmentation.

 

[corkyg]

PerfectDisk 8, latest build, is just about perfect. It's GUI is much better (for me) than Diskeeper's - which always looks fragmented. PD is faster and more accurate, and does a better job of offline work with System files and metadata files. I tried 'em both and PD wins.

 

[Modelworks]

Using perfect disk 8 and it works great.
I like that perfectdisk can work with just 5% free space on the drive.

It amazes me when I look at individual files that are fragmented and find one that is split into 100+ fragments.
My poor hard drive.

 

[Nothinman]

I can't believe people actually pay for defrag tools...

 

[stoneysilence]

So you say we shouldn't pay for a defrag tool but then you offer no suggestion on some good free ones?

 

[duragezic]

He probably means it is not worth to bother with any defrag tool. Of course, coming from a unix-based system, fragmentation is probably not an issue. But he might be right for NTFS too. I'm not sure how much fragmentation affects NTFS drive performance. I know it was common to defrag in the past, but these days, I think fragmentation is pretty insignificant. I don't defrag myself... I just never think to or care, and I don't notice any difference over months of use.

Still, I'd like to see some sort of tests or benchmarks ran that show if there is any actual difference in use.

As to your question, well it sounds like you've done your research, and checked out trial versions, so I think PerfectDisk sounds like the better choice. It got good comments here and is much cheaper. So, if you do want a defrag tool, at least you are only spending $40. Still, it's hard to say if that $40 is worth it, when even if you really want to defrag, you do get the built-in defragger with Windows.

Wouldn't it be quite difficult to judge the effectiveness during just a 30 day trial period? Say you use Diskeeper for 30 days and get a feel for it, then on day 31, you get PerfectDisk trial for 30 days. Are you running it every day, or every week? It seems like the only possible time it could have any affect is the very first time it is ran (i.e. day 1 with Diskeeper). So those trials probably aren't all that effective, if defragging itself is even that important.

Got at least 2GB of RAM? For $40-70, I'd put it into RAM or something else. Or a new game.

 

[Nothinman]

So you say we shouldn't pay for a defrag tool but then you offer no suggestion on some good free ones?

What's so bad about the built-in one? In XP you have to do a little work to schedule it but in Vista it does it's thing on it's own without any work on your part.

Of course, coming from a unix-based system, fragmentation is probably not an issue. But he might be right for NTFS too. I'm not sure how much fragmentation affects NTFS drive performance. I know it was common to defrag in the past, but these days, I think fragmentation is pretty insignificant. I don't defrag myself... I just never think to or care, and I don't notice any difference over months of use.

It can affect performance but it's usually only noticeable in corner cases. Hell my torrent volume is fragmented all to hell since rtorrent doesn't preallocate it's files but I don't care since it doesn't affect the speed of the downloads or my use of those files.

#xfs_db -r -c frag /dev/mapper/cdata
actual 1997321, ideal 31685, fragmentation factor 98.41%

 

[stoneysilence]

I have found the built in ones to be junk and do a poor job in general. What I did was ran the demo of Diskeeper for it's 30 days then went about 30 days without a defragger then tried Perfectdisk. Perfectdisk has made my windows run a lot quicker. Where it used to sometimes take a few seconds for all the icons in Control Panel to load, now it is almost instant. It is also quite noticeable in games that I play (MMORPG's like EQ2).

I got 4gb of ram so I don't need more ram. Actually I need to upgrade to a 64bit Vista (currently running 32bit Vista Business). But I plan on doing that end of September.

 

[Nothinman]

The built-in one is just DiskKeeper without the scheduling and admin tools...

 

[Modelworks]

defragmenting and performance all depends on how you use your pc.
If your just email/web stuff your not going to see a difference.

If your doing video editing though, and your pushing the limit on your hard drives throughput then defragmenting will make a difference.

Also if your playing games where the game has all the textures in one huge cab file or archive it will make a difference.

 

[Noema]

Originally posted by: stoneysilence
I have found the built in ones to be junk and do a poor job in general.

Like Nothinman said, the built in one is just a slimmed down version of disk keeper.

What I did was ran the demo of Diskeeper for it's 30 days then went about 30 days without a defragger then tried Perfectdisk. Perfectdisk has made my windows run a lot quicker. Where it used to sometimes take a few seconds for all the icons in Control Panel to load, now it is almost instant. It is also quite noticeable in games that I play (MMORPG's like EQ2).

Do you have any actual benchmarks? This sounds more like a placebo effect than anything else.

Or as Nothinman would say, "Snake Oil"

 

[Nothinman]

Or as Nothinman would say, "Snake Oil"

I've refrained from using that phrase so far, but yes I do believe that most of those tools are snake oil. =)