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PerfectDisk 2000

Defragments Windows Drives

By Richard Corzo

 

The more you use your computer, the more files you create and destroy on you hard drive. When a new file is first created, an allocation of space is reserved from the available free space. If the data in the file grows, as for instance in a log file, additional space is reserved as needed. Depending on the file system you use on your Windows machine—FAT, FAT32, or NTFS —and the partition size, the allocation units may be as small as 512 bytes or as large as 32K bytes. There is no guarantee that all the clusters in a file are contiguous. In fact this is less and less likely as you use your computer.

If your machine seems to have gotten slower than when you first got it, it may be because the files on the hard have become highly fragmented. It takes more time to read a file if its pieces are scattered over different places on the hard drive. Windows 95 and 98 have a built-in defragmentation utility that you can invoke by right clicking on a drive in My Computer, selecting Properties, then the Tools tab. Alternatively you can start the program from Start | Programs | Accessories | System Tools. Windows NT does not have a utility built in, but Windows 2000 does.

Built-in Utility

Windows 2000 Disk Defragmenter.The new Windows 2000 Disk Defragmenter was developed by Executive Software and is a pared-down version of the full-featured Diskeeper program. Executive was early into the Windows NT defragmentation utility market, and for Windows NT 4.0 had a freeware utility called Diskeeper Lite. Diskeeper Lite is no longer available now that Windows 2000 has been released. The Windows 2000 Disk Defragmenter is similar to Diskeeper Lite, which I had used on Windows NT 4.0, but is different from the Windows 95/98 Disk Defragmenter that wasdeveloped by Norton.

PerfectDisk 2000

PerfectDisk 2000.There is a new competitor in the Windows disk defragmentation market. A company called Raxco Software offers PerfectDisk 2000. It works on all the 32-bit flavors of Windows: 2000, NT, 95, and 98.

Why might someone look for something more than the built-in Windows 2000 utility? Without some programming there is no way to schedule the built-in utility. It only defragments files and, in the case of NTFS drives, also directories. It doesn’t defragment the NTFS master file table (MFT), system files, or the paging file (used to provide virtual memory beyond the physical memory in your machine).

Executive Software’s Diskeeper 5.0 NT Workstation is one alternative ($39.95). I haven’t tried the full product, but in my experience with Diskeeper Lite it often seemed to require multiple passes to completely defragment a drive. With Raxco Software’s PerfectDisk 2000 ($44 for download, $49.95 on CD-ROM), this usually wasn’t necessary. PerfectDisk also seemed more likely to succeed on drives with little free space (10-15 %).

Defragmentation Strategies

PerfectDisk 2000 has a different strategy for defragmentating a drive. Diskeeper Lite and the built-in Disk Defragmenter pack all the defragmented files at the beginning of the drive and leave all the free space at the end of the drive. Existing files that get modified frequently aren’t necessarily near the free space and so would get refragmented quickly. PerfectDisk’s approach is to put the free space in the middle of the drive, the least frequently modified files on the outer edges, the occasionally modified files next to those, and the most frequently modified files closest to the free space. This reduces subsequent fragmentation and is supposed to make future defragmentation passes complete more quickly.

Another strategy optionally taken by the Windows 98 Disk Defragmenter is to place the clusters in the order in which they are actually accessed as a program loads. This in theory makes programs load faster. I didn’t notice a discernable difference in load time when I defragmented my Windows 98 system drive using PerfectDisk 2000 instead of the Disk Defragmenter tool.

To defragment FAT directories, system files, or the page file, PerfectDisk 2000 has an “offline” defragmentation capability that works with the drive temporarily disconnected if files are not open; otherwise it kicks in the next time the machine boots. A command-line version of PerfectDisk is included for those who would like to schedule defragmentation using Windows 2000’s Task Scheduler.

There is a trial version of PerfectDisk available. If you decide to buy it, you may have better luck buying it from one of Raxco Software’s resellers rather than directly from Raxco.

Conclusion

I have been very satisfied with PerfectDisk 2000’s ability to do the job. I would recommend the application to anyone who is already considering a third-party defragmentation utility for Windows 95 (OEM Service Release 2), 98, NT, or 2000. Minimum memory required is stated as 16 MB, with 64 MB recommended.


Richard Corzo is a computer programmer currently working for Apelon, Inc. in Ridgefield, CT. He has contributed past articles on PC operating systems and utilities.

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