Anyone Use Diskeeper In W2K?

[soinie]

I was thinking of purchasing this but thought I might ask here first
if there was any point in using this as opposed to the defragmenter in
W2K. Thanks.

 

[Kerodo]

I was thinking of purchasing this but thought I might ask here first
if there was any point in using this as opposed to the defragmenter in
W2K. Thanks.

I tried it once and didn't like it because it "took over" and installed
itself in place of the regular Win2K defrag, so that you couldn't use
the regular defrag any more. I think the one that comes with Win2k is
good enough for most purposes..

 

[Leythos]

I was thinking of purchasing this but thought I might ask here first
if there was any point in using this as opposed to the defragmenter in
W2K. Thanks.

A limited version of Diskeeper is packaged with 2000 and XP, but the
full version will do much more. I disable the real-time defrag tool and
run a full off-line (boot up) defrag once a month on development systems
and a full online once a week on heavy use system. On servers I run it
at scheduled times during slow periods.

When I see a company not using it on heavy-use workstations or servers I
suggest it, then, after it's run, a full defrag/pack, I always hear how
much quicker data access is.

 

[Jay Somerset]

I tried it once and didn't like it because it "took over" and installed
itself in place of the regular Win2K defrag, so that you couldn't use
the regular defrag any more. I think the one that comes with Win2k is
good enough for most purposes..

Why on earth would you want to use the built-in defrag when you have a
proper defrag program? Doesn't make sense to me.

Diskkeeper (DK) is a fully competent defrga program -- probably the best
allaround one on the market. Its primary competition is PerfectDisk (PD).
PD has more capability, and does the best job on boot time defragging, but
has an unfortunate tendencey to not defrag all files, and actually increases
fragmentation sometimes.

DK, on the other hand, will defrag files better, but doesn't attempt to
consolidate free space as well.

Either one is worth the money!

 

[Kerodo]

Why on earth would you want to use the built-in defrag when you have a
proper defrag program? Doesn't make sense to me.

I guess I'm just not obsessed with defragging.. The build in one does
the job well enough. What more do you need?

 

[Leythos]

I guess I'm just not obsessed with defragging.. The build in one does
the job well enough. What more do you need?

The built-in one does not do anywhere near as good a job at
consolidating free space or in moving system files. The built-in one can
not be scheduled to run at a specific time, nor can it be set to run in
the background during idle time.

 

[Kerodo]

The built-in one does not do anywhere near as good a job at
consolidating free space or in moving system files. The built-in one can
not be scheduled to run at a specific time, nor can it be set to run in
the background during idle time.

None of which I need myself, but I guess that answers the other person's
original question...

 

[Jim Romanchek]

I use DK 7.0. I never bothered upgrading because 7.0 did the job. I think
the current version is 9.0. The only caution I would give is that I tried
the boot time defrag and it crashed my computer, so I never use the boot
time feature anymore.
Jim

 

[Leythos]

I use DK 7.0. I never bothered upgrading because 7.0 did the job. I think
the current version is 9.0. The only caution I would give is that I tried
the boot time defrag and it crashed my computer, so I never use the boot
time feature anymore.

We use DK 7, and 9, never tried 8, but had tried 6 before that, in a
corporate environment. In all the years of doing a boot-time defrag I've
never even run into a person that had a fault because of it - you will
be my first.

What do you attribute the fault too?

Were you having problems with the drive? What the motherboard and
hardware stable? Were they are faults with the drive systems?

I do a boot-time defrag of our servers every 6+ months, when we take
them down for maintenance, or when we can for ones that can't go off-
line for any length. I also boot-time defrag our workstations, but we
buy good hardware and never attempt to defrag a buggy system.

 

[Jim Romanchek]

I don't have an explanation for why it crashed. The computer had been running
slowly. I did a normal defrag and it helped a lot. As I was exploring
different capabilities of DK I saw the boot time option and thought I could
improve the performance even more. When I ran it, I got page after page of
"file recovery notices" or something like that. When all was over, the system
wouldn't boot. It just hung up. Eventually I reformated the drive and reloaded
everything. Since then I've been gun shy of ever trying the boot time defrag
again.

I was running W2k, SP2 I think back then. It was on my son's computer and he
used AOL IM all the time. I'm just guessing that it was caused by some of the
debris that IM leaves on the hard drive.
Jim

 

[Dennis Langton]

Always remember to run chkdsk before a boottime defragmentation. Diskkeeper has an option to do this.

I don't have an explanation for why it crashed. The computer had been running
slowly. I did a normal defrag and it helped a lot. As I was exploring
different capabilities of DK I saw the boot time option and thought I could
improve the performance even more. When I ran it, I got page after page of
"file recovery notices" or something like that. When all was over, the system
wouldn't boot. It just hung up. Eventually I reformated the drive and reloaded
everything. Since then I've been gun shy of ever trying the boot time defrag
again.

I was running W2k, SP2 I think back then. It was on my son's computer and he
used AOL IM all the time. I'm just guessing that it was caused by some of the
debris that IM leaves on the hard drive.
Jim

 

[Gary Smith]

I was thinking of purchasing this but thought I might ask here first
if there was any point in using this as opposed to the defragmenter in
W2K. Thanks.

I have used several versions of Diskeeper, bith on Windows NT and Windows
2000. I've never had a problem with it, but on a workstation used
primarily by one person, I haven't seen it make a visible difference,
either. I defrag only manually, whenever I happen to think it might be
time, so if there was going to be a performance improvement you'd think I
would notice it, but I haven't.

 

[Mark Betz]

I'm fairly obsessed with defragging. I've used DK 8 & 9 on Win2K & XP and
have noticed significant improvement on my home systems. Never had a problem
with the boottime defrag either.

Mark

 

[Leythos]

I'm fairly obsessed with defragging. I've used DK 8 & 9 on Win2K & XP and
have noticed significant improvement on my home systems. Never had a problem
with the boottime defrag either.

I agree, I have over 200,000 files on my main computer, the one that I
do design work with, and I notice when I don't defrag.

 

[soinie]

I have used several versions of Diskeeper, bith on Windows NT and Windows
2000. I've never had a problem with it, but on a workstation used
primarily by one person, I haven't seen it make a visible difference,
either. I defrag only manually, whenever I happen to think it might be
time, so if there was going to be a performance improvement you'd think I
would notice it, but I haven't.

Thanks for the help. I was debating getting either DK or Norton
Utilities for the defragging, but NU is so buggy I don't think I want
it on my machine. I think I'll go for DK. I already have Norton
AntiVirus so the other stuff in the package is virtually superfluous.

 

[Guest]

Soinie:

I have trialled Diskeeper on my Win2K systems. I find it did an excellent
job defragging, also was able to defrag some stuff that the version in Win2K
didn't.

I am still considering buying it after the first of the year.

 

[Greg Hayes/Raxco Software]

There was a potential issue with earlier builds of DK V7 and boot time
defragmenting. They were neglecting to verify that no other processes had
the drive opened for write access during the boot time defrag. Initially,
Executive's response was that it was a BIOS issue but they eventually
released an update (Build 430) that includes the following:

The Diskeeper NTFS boot-time engines have been modified in this build to
verify they have exclusive access to the volume being defragmented. This
change ensures that no other drivers or services can modify the volume while
the boot-time defragmentation is running. If the volume cannot be locked,
an error message appears describing this and the boot-time defragmentation
will not run.

This may have been what you saw on your system.

- Greg/Raxco Software
Microsoft MVP - Windows File System

Disclaimer: I work for Raxco Software, the maker of PerfectDisk - a
commercial defrag utility, as a systems engineer in the support department.

Want to email me? Delete ntloader.

I don't have an explanation for why it crashed. The computer had been running
slowly. I did a normal defrag and it helped a lot. As I was exploring
different capabilities of DK I saw the boot time option and thought I could
improve the performance even more. When I ran it, I got page after page of
"file recovery notices" or something like that. When all was over, the system
wouldn't boot. It just hung up. Eventually I reformated the drive and reloaded
everything. Since then I've been gun shy of ever trying the boot time defrag
again.

I was running W2k, SP2 I think back then. It was on my son's computer and he
used AOL IM all the time. I'm just guessing that it was caused by some of the
debris that IM leaves on the hard drive.
Jim