PerfectDisk vs Diskeeper vs PageDefrag

[Greg Hayes/Raxco Software]

What partition was the recovery console installed to - FATx or NTFS? The
procedure that Windows uses to boot into the Recovery Console differs
depending on partition.

- Greg/Raxco Software
Microsoft MVP - Windows Storage Management/File System

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

 

[Phil Barila]

Neo,

If PD fails to defrag during boot time, then it is usually because some
other process has opened a write handle to the drive prior to PerfectDisk
being able to do what it needs to do. Do you have PCAnywhere V10.x
installed or StyleXPHelper installed on this system?

Greg,

Got PD6 recently ;-), and I like it, but...

It doesn't seem to like to coexist with boot time chkdsk.

System is XP SP1 with all the updates available on Windows Update.
C: is SCSI ID 0, S: is SCSI ID 1, and the HBA is 7.
D: is Primary Master ATA device.
E: & F: are Secondary Master & slave, respectively, ATAPI devices.

Everything is NTFS, and there are page files on all three disks.

The symptom is that PDBoot seems to always want to be first in line, and if
it isn't, it chokes. That's kind of troublesome, as you might like to
chkdsk first, and the way things happen now, I can't, unless I unschedule
the boot time defrag, schedule the chkdsk, reboot, then schedule the boot
time defrag and reboot again.

I'm wondering if there's a gotcha with BootExec that's calling PDBoot
prematurely? Is it supposed to be "cooperative" down there in the Native
execution environment? I haven't had any similar problems with Pagefile
Defragger from Sysinternals, but it puts itself at the end of the
multi-string, so I'm not sure if that has anything to do with it. It
appears that, *in general*, the order the strings appear is the order they
are executed. PDBoot seems to break that behavior a bit.

I would expect that this:
autocheck autochk /p \??\C:
autocheck autochk /p \??\D:
autocheck autochk /p \??\S:
PDBoot
autocheck autochk *
pgdfgsvc C 1

Would result in chkdsk on C:;
a reboot;
chksdsk on D: & S:;
PD6 running on the clean volumes it's scheduled to defrag;
Then pgdfgsvc finding everything is already contiguous.

What happens is that PD6 reports a startup issue and aborts by restarting
the system. Am I doing something wrong? Is XP SP1 doing something wrong
here?

Thanks,

Phil
--
Philip D. Barila Windows DDK MVP
Seagate Technology, LLC
(720) 684-1842
As if I need to say it: Not speaking for Seagate.
E-mail address is pointed at a domain squatter. Use reply-to instead.

 

[neo [mvp outlook]]

Yes on TGTSoft's StyleXP and no on PCAnywhere. Will disable StyleXP to see
if it completes. (figured it had to be some weirdo software problem)

 

[Vaughn McMillan - Executive Software]

On Wed, 17 Sep 2003 17:17:45 -0700, "Jim Byrd"

-- Snip --

Diskeeper offers no Active Directory integration."

This is no longer the case; Diskeeper 8.0 Administrator Edition fully
supports Active Directory, as well as custom logical groups. Diskeeper
also supports Windows Server 2003 and Server Appliance Kit (2000 and
2003).

As another poster mentioned earlier, my suggesting is to get in touch
with each company, talk to a sales rep, tell them what you need and
see what each has to offer. Then try the different products and see
which one works best for your environment.

I hope this helps -

Vaughn McMillan
Executive Software

 

[Greg Hayes/Raxco Software]

DKV8 allows you to "see" Active Directories - like what you see using
Windows Explorer if you click on My Network Places/Entire
Network/Directory - where you are presented with a list of
Computers/Organizational Units. You can then use DKV8 Administrator Edition
to schedule using the computers presented by Active Directory. While
technically you could call this "integration" with Active Directory, DKV8
doesn't actually allow you to use Active Directory itself for scheduling,
management or configuration of DKV8.

- Greg/Raxco Software
Microsoft MVP - Windows Storage Management/File System

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

 

[Phil Barila]

Greg,

Got PD6 recently ;-), and I like it, but...

It doesn't seem to like to coexist with boot time chkdsk.

Or maybe another boot time defragger that uses a driver, also?

System is XP SP1 with all the updates available on Windows Update.
C: is SCSI ID 0, S: is SCSI ID 1, and the HBA is 7.
D: is Primary Master ATA device.
E: & F: are Secondary Master & slave, respectively, ATAPI devices.

Everything is NTFS, and there are page files on all three disks.

The symptom is that PDBoot seems to always want to be first in line, and if
it isn't, it chokes. That's kind of troublesome, as you might like to
chkdsk first, and the way things happen now, I can't, unless I unschedule
the boot time defrag, schedule the chkdsk, reboot, then schedule the boot
time defrag and reboot again.

I'm wondering if there's a gotcha with BootExec that's calling PDBoot
prematurely? Is it supposed to be "cooperative" down there in the Native
execution environment? I haven't had any similar problems with Pagefile
Defragger from Sysinternals, but it puts itself at the end of the
multi-string, so I'm not sure if that has anything to do with it. It
appears that, *in general*, the order the strings appear is the order they
are executed. PDBoot seems to break that behavior a bit.

I would expect that this:
autocheck autochk /p \??\C:
autocheck autochk /p \??\D:
autocheck autochk /p \??\S:
PDBoot
autocheck autochk *
pgdfgsvc C 1

Hmm, why would I need pgdfgsvc, which is a system files only defragger, if I
have PD? I don't. What I didn't realize is that pgdfgsvc loads a driver
(or service, I don't remember which) that grabs exclusive access. So
pgdfgsvc isn't as benign as I thought it was, and it was the real culprit.
This isn't a slam on PageDefrag or SysInternals. The implementation is a
valid and legitimate (and maybe the only) way to defrag the page files,
among others. But it's not like chkdsk, in that chkdsk is only a native
app, without a corresponding driver, and PageDefrag needs a helper that
interferes with PD.

Would result in chkdsk on C:;
a reboot;
chksdsk on D: & S:;
PD6 running on the clean volumes it's scheduled to defrag;
Then pgdfgsvc finding everything is already contiguous.

What happens is that PD6 reports a startup issue and aborts by restarting
the system. Am I doing something wrong? Is XP SP1 doing something wrong
here?

Yes, I was. I was running yet another widget that prevents PD6 from
grabbing exclusive access. You can Add PageDefrag from SysInternals to your
list of things that prevent PD from doing Boot defrags.

Phil
--
Philip D. Barila Windows DDK MVP
Seagate Technology, LLC
(720) 684-1842
As if I need to say it: Not speaking for Seagate.
E-mail address is pointed at a domain squatter. Use reply-to instead.