boot-time defrag?

[Spin]

Is there any other defragger out there beside DiskKeeper which can do a
boot-time defrag?

--

 

[Dan Seur]

PerfectDisk. A very fine defragger.

 

[Rob Stow]

PerfectDisk. A very fine defragger.

I second the recommendation for PerfectDisk - but I wouldn't
hesitate to give the same recommendation for DiskKeeper. I
use them both regularly and they both do a fine job.

What do you have against DiskKeeper ?

 

[Dan Seur]

Rob - The short answer is nothing against DiskKeeper.

But I had superb and extended personal support from the PerfectDisk tech
guys in Gaithersburg a while back with a truly bizarre NT4 SP6a problem
involving 2 or 3 partitions that simply wouldn't do a boot defrag. Mucho
phone & emailing special diagnostics etc; never saw such a backroom
response from anybody, including a plan to bring the damn machine to
their bench when I was visiting DC (elected not to do that). I moved to
W2k (and the latest version of PD) when we all threw up our hands and
concluded I had some subtle NTFS problem with symptoms nobody'd
encountered before. We really ran the remote support string all the way
out. I have great respect for that team; they behaved the way my teams
in Pokip (and G'burg FSD) used to behave when an MVT module they wrote
started hiccuping somewhere. Get the next release out on time, but
flatten that problem too, no matter what.

 

[Rob Stow]

I second the recommendation for PerfectDisk - but I wouldn't
hesitate to give the same recommendation for DiskKeeper. I
use them both regularly and they both do a fine job.

What do you have against DiskKeeper ?

[Top posting fixed]
Rob - The short answer is nothing against DiskKeeper.

[SNIP]

Actually, I was hoping for an answer from the OP, since his
original message hints that he doesn't want DiskKeeper.

But I had superb and extended personal support from the PerfectDisk tech
guys in Gaithersburg a while back with a truly bizarre NT4 SP6a problem
involving 2 or 3 partitions that simply wouldn't do a boot defrag. Mucho
phone & emailing special diagnostics etc; never saw such a backroom
response from anybody, including a plan to bring the damn machine to
their bench when I was visiting DC (elected not to do that). I moved to
W2k (and the latest version of PD) when we all threw up our hands and
concluded I had some subtle NTFS problem with symptoms nobody'd
encountered before. We really ran the remote support string all the way
out. I have great respect for that team; they behaved the way my teams
in Pokip (and G'burg FSD) used to behave when an MVT module they wrote
started hiccuping somewhere. Get the next release out on time, but
flatten that problem too, no matter what.

I've had great support from both the DK and PD teams. That support is
the *only* reason I don't recommend any of the other defraggers out
there: they seem to do the job but you are on your own if you run
into problems.

My usage is gradually trending more towards PD. It is really hard to
put a finger on it, but for some subtle reason or another I simply
find PD to have a more comfortable and easy to use UI. I do,
however, prefer the reports and stats generated by DK.

 

[Jay Somerset]

I second the recommendation for PerfectDisk - but I wouldn't
hesitate to give the same recommendation for DiskKeeper. I
use them both regularly and they both do a fine job.

What do you have against DiskKeeper ?

In my experience, PD provides significantly better boot-time defragmentation
than DK. For example, DK7 will defrag the metadata files, but not
consolidate them into one block. PD will do that.

PD also can defrag and collate directories on-line -- DK must do a boot-time
defrag to handle directories.

Both exhibit brain-dead behavior on occasion -- DK will sometimes aimlessly
move a small "hole" through multiple gigabytes of contigous, unfragmented
files, while leaving huge freespace gaps at the end of the run. PD will
often create fragmentation where it did not previously exist.

For all its ills, Norton speedisk behaved rationally, but it is definitely
less safe, and its future support seems highly suspect.