Defragging Vista Home Premium - Diskeeper v PerfectDisk

[Doug]

Defrag Diskeeper 2008 Pro versus PerfectDisk 2008 Pro

Having used Diskeeper 2008 Pro I noted a marginal preference expressed on
this NG for PerfectDisk 2008 Pro, so I uninstalled Diskeeper and installed
PerfectDisk on 30 day trial.

In use I felt that the PD approach of getting the most used files to the
edge of the disk to reduce the amount of file movement was a good idea and
there seemed to be some slight improvement in speed. However when I set a
boot time defrag, a low level error message came up something like "Unable
to gain exclusive access to drive C", chkdsk was not run, and no boot time
defrag took place as far as I could tell.

After a couple of days I uninstalled PerfectDisk and reinstalled Diskeeper
whose boot time defrag still worked perfectly, but booting was slow and
accompanied by an error message something like PDBoot.exe not found -
skipping autocheck.

So I was generally impressed with PerfectDisk, but disappointed that it
couldn't perform a boot time defrag and that it failed to remove all traces
of itself when uninstalled.

But that leaves me with the nagging thought - could it have been that it was
Diskeeper that failed to uninstall cleanly, making PerfectDisk "Unable to
gain exclusive access to drive C"? Or is it a Vista problem?

Has anyone here mastered boot time defragging with PerfectDisk 2008 Pro?

Doug

 

[Mike Hall - MVP]

Defrag Diskeeper 2008 Pro versus PerfectDisk 2008 Pro

Having used Diskeeper 2008 Pro I noted a marginal preference expressed on
this NG for PerfectDisk 2008 Pro, so I uninstalled Diskeeper and installed
PerfectDisk on 30 day trial.

In use I felt that the PD approach of getting the most used files to the
edge of the disk to reduce the amount of file movement was a good idea and
there seemed to be some slight improvement in speed. However when I set a
boot time defrag, a low level error message came up something like "Unable
to gain exclusive access to drive C", chkdsk was not run, and no boot time
defrag took place as far as I could tell.

After a couple of days I uninstalled PerfectDisk and reinstalled Diskeeper
whose boot time defrag still worked perfectly, but booting was slow and
accompanied by an error message something like PDBoot.exe not found -
skipping autocheck.

So I was generally impressed with PerfectDisk, but disappointed that it
couldn't perform a boot time defrag and that it failed to remove all
traces of itself when uninstalled.

But that leaves me with the nagging thought - could it have been that it
was Diskeeper that failed to uninstall cleanly, making PerfectDisk "Unable
to gain exclusive access to drive C"? Or is it a Vista problem?

Has anyone here mastered boot time defragging with PerfectDisk 2008 Pro?

Doug

I had the same thing happen to me. Look in registry for pdboot.exe and
delete the key(s)

Utilities are supposed to work with the OS, not the other way around. I
stick with Diskeeper and run it once weekly..


--
Mike Hall - MVP
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[John E]

Defrag Diskeeper 2008 Pro versus PerfectDisk 2008 Pro

In use I felt that the PD approach of getting the most used files to the
edge of the disk to reduce the amount of file movement was a good idea and
there seemed to be some slight improvement in speed. However when I set a
boot time defrag, a low level error message came up something like "Unable
to gain exclusive access to drive C", chkdsk was not run, and no boot time
defrag took place as far as I could tell.

Has anyone here mastered boot time defragging with PerfectDisk 2008 Pro?

Doug

I had that problem a while back, and it was resolved by installing a later
build of Perfect Disk 2008.

(From Support on Raxco's Perfect disk site: "Microsoft made a change in
Vista SP1 that prevents PerfectDisk's boot time defrag from running. This is
fixed by updating to PerfectDisk 2008 Build 52.")

It works fine now.

John

 

[John Barnes]

I had that problem and Diskkeeper was never installed. I also had the
problem before SP1 was installed, but it is always best to get the latest
copy. Since he has the latest (at least I would assume the trial download
would be the latest) version, it probably isn't that unless they broke it
with a later version.
I personally didn't find any improvement using either. I ocassionally run
defrag using the command prompt.

 

[Doug]

Mike H, pooch, John E and John B.
Helped by your combined support to look for the right sort of thing on the
raxco site, I
eventually I found this:
http://www.raxco.com/support/kb_detail.cfm?action=topsupport&prod=1&ver=2008
which resolved the problem so that PerfectDisk 2008 Pro now does boot time
defrag.
Very many thanks - Doug

 

[rajan ramani]

After trying out both, I decided to stick with Diskeeper. Havent had any problems with its boot defrag.

Rajan