What happened to Norton Speed Disk?>

[AGreived]

I just upgraded my system from 98SE to Win2K, so I also changed from Norton Utils v4 to 2002, and i dont think i like the change at all. For one thing, there is hardly half the programs in the package, and speed disk, especially, sux. There is hardly any choice on how you want the defragging done, it is much slower, and after running it 3 times in a row on a 2GB OS partition on my HD, it still leaves stuff scattered around the drive. I did set it up for high priority and high memory use, so that shouldnt be a problem at all. i am just terribly disappointed in the lack of functionality and results of what i once thought was a great program. I mean, how can you optimize a disk 3 times in a row without opening or closing any programs and still take 30 minutes to run? I figure it should run once and get it right the first time, like my old version did..

Anyway..I guess that is enough ranting.. anyone else have similar thoughts? or is it just me?

 

[uCsDNerd]

i don't know. what?

 

[randypj]

Yep, I agree. I hate the interface (but, don't it look purty?). I've had to muck around lots.....just to be able to get it to do what I'd been used to for years.
--Randy

 

[manly]

AGrieved,

I haven't used Speed Disk in a long time because Diskeeper is the de facto standard defragger for NT-based operating systems.

However, if your filesystem is NTFS, then you may be blaming Norton for the faults of the filesystem.

In my limited experience, NTFS fragments itself regularly. Furthermore, when you defragment it, it doesn't consolidate into one contiguous stream like you're used to with Speed Disk and FAT in the old days.

That's fine, because the goal is to defragment the files quickly, not to consolidate all the data into one area on the disk. As a hint to what I perceive as a fault of NTFS, Diskeeper recommends that you schedule daily defragmentation of your filesystems. With FAT, it was a procedure you'd only need to do every couple weeks or so.

Download the Diskeeper Trial, and see if you like it. I think your conclusion is not all that far off though: Norton Utilities used to be a must-have collection, but nowadays I only need NAV.

 

[DefRef]

Norton has all the goodies still in Systemworks, but only for Win9x/Me. Win2K/XP got less than half of the goodies and that's why I'm glad that I didn't shell out for the latest version, after buying EVERY version that came before it. It's just about worthless now. Stick with NAV.

 

[AGreived]

Manly, I think you are definately right about how it fragments itself, that is something i noticed between two different days that i defragged (first when i installed it, and then last night) .

I still think that the program has been seriously dumbed down because i ran the old version and got a good result even after the switch. The only real problem, i guess, is that most of the programs dont work on WIn2K, so i cant just reinstall it..... unless someone can tell me how to just pull speed disk off the cd?
I will try Diskeeper, I should have thought of that myself, but after first running into Nortons' in the '80's (which did several wonderful things for me) I have had a certain brand loyalty..

I still want to know who at symantec thought this was such a wonderful package to bless the computing world with though.. you would think even marketing types would know better..

 

[DefRef]

Their PR line is that they concentrated on making the most important stuff run on NT OSes. Yeah, right. WTF can't File Compare or the Benchmark button work? Where's their Registry Editor. It's totally not worth it these days.