T
Tom Goodman
Be Warned.
For a long time I've used Diskeeper Pro Premier and it has kept twin
SATA 250 GB drives very well defragmented in auto mode, no need to do
take any action on my part.
Trouble started when I installed an external iQon Qdrive Extrem 500 GB
external on the same machine. This is a fine drive which I bought from
Aldi for £89. It comes with USB2 and SATA interfaces and includes eSATA
PCI adaptor. I' using it in USB2 mode as I don't have a spare SATA slot.
Drive mechanism is a Samsung HD 501LJ which got a god write up in Tom's
Hardware, it's pretty quiet and cool, has aluminium case and no fan.
Only slight drawback is a powerbrick which gets HOT.
This drive was bought to be used as the main data drive for eMule and so
was expected to get heavily fragmented after an emule session (about 60
DL's at once). It did.
Diskeeper was quite unable to defragment either simultaneously with the
application or worse still subsequently on an unattended automatic OR
manual run mode.
The disc has about 350 GB of free space, largest file of 60 downloading
is about 1.5GB (at present) and there have been up to 14380 fragments,
and there are reported 1170 files on the drive with average size of 160MB
In automatic mode diskeeper seems to run continuously on this drive but
fails to reduce the number of fragments effectively; it continues to
report heavy fragmentation with 8 to 10 fragments per file.
A manual defrag pass, to my amazement, only reduced the number of
fragments by one or two per file and still reported heavy fragmentation.
I then installed Raxco Perfect Disk 8. In the past I have used perfect
disk but dropped it for the install and forget mode of diskeeper which
seemed a no hassle solution.
ONE pass of Perfect Disk on the recommended settings after analysis
reduced the file fragmentation to ZERO with intelligent file placement.
Meanwhile Diskeeper was running in the background and I noticed that it
began to insect the drive. To my horror I found that Diskeeper was now
undoing the good work of Perfect Disk and that fragments were appearing
where before there were none. The drive is only used for eMuleing and
XP indexing was switched off.
After a while Diskeeper had managed to increase the number of fragments
to about 4 per file and again reported heavy drive fragmentation.
Conclusion.
Diskeeper is unable to defragement an external USB2 drive of 500GB, but
actually fragments an already defragmented drive. Avoid this product in
this configuration.
I found Raxco Perfect Disk 8 extremely effective and will be using this
product on the above configuration from now on.
I am unable to test Diskeeper's performance on the same drive in SATA
configuration as a spare slot is unavailable on the present motherboard.
XP pro SP2 updated free of viruses trojans bots...so far as I know.
I hope the above story will be useful to people thinking of buying a
large external USB drive. It seems that even excellent products, like
Diskeeper, might have trouble dealing with big external disks.
I'm wondering if others have had similar troubles and if they go away by
using SATA instead of USB2 ?
For a long time I've used Diskeeper Pro Premier and it has kept twin
SATA 250 GB drives very well defragmented in auto mode, no need to do
take any action on my part.
Trouble started when I installed an external iQon Qdrive Extrem 500 GB
external on the same machine. This is a fine drive which I bought from
Aldi for £89. It comes with USB2 and SATA interfaces and includes eSATA
PCI adaptor. I' using it in USB2 mode as I don't have a spare SATA slot.
Drive mechanism is a Samsung HD 501LJ which got a god write up in Tom's
Hardware, it's pretty quiet and cool, has aluminium case and no fan.
Only slight drawback is a powerbrick which gets HOT.
This drive was bought to be used as the main data drive for eMule and so
was expected to get heavily fragmented after an emule session (about 60
DL's at once). It did.
Diskeeper was quite unable to defragment either simultaneously with the
application or worse still subsequently on an unattended automatic OR
manual run mode.
The disc has about 350 GB of free space, largest file of 60 downloading
is about 1.5GB (at present) and there have been up to 14380 fragments,
and there are reported 1170 files on the drive with average size of 160MB
In automatic mode diskeeper seems to run continuously on this drive but
fails to reduce the number of fragments effectively; it continues to
report heavy fragmentation with 8 to 10 fragments per file.
A manual defrag pass, to my amazement, only reduced the number of
fragments by one or two per file and still reported heavy fragmentation.
I then installed Raxco Perfect Disk 8. In the past I have used perfect
disk but dropped it for the install and forget mode of diskeeper which
seemed a no hassle solution.
ONE pass of Perfect Disk on the recommended settings after analysis
reduced the file fragmentation to ZERO with intelligent file placement.
Meanwhile Diskeeper was running in the background and I noticed that it
began to insect the drive. To my horror I found that Diskeeper was now
undoing the good work of Perfect Disk and that fragments were appearing
where before there were none. The drive is only used for eMuleing and
XP indexing was switched off.
After a while Diskeeper had managed to increase the number of fragments
to about 4 per file and again reported heavy drive fragmentation.
Conclusion.
Diskeeper is unable to defragement an external USB2 drive of 500GB, but
actually fragments an already defragmented drive. Avoid this product in
this configuration.
I found Raxco Perfect Disk 8 extremely effective and will be using this
product on the above configuration from now on.
I am unable to test Diskeeper's performance on the same drive in SATA
configuration as a spare slot is unavailable on the present motherboard.
XP pro SP2 updated free of viruses trojans bots...so far as I know.
I hope the above story will be useful to people thinking of buying a
large external USB drive. It seems that even excellent products, like
Diskeeper, might have trouble dealing with big external disks.
I'm wondering if others have had similar troubles and if they go away by
using SATA instead of USB2 ?