Basides Norton, what's the next best disk diagnosis/defrag app?

"mrbog" <dterrors@hotmail.com>

wrote in news:cbd4bb52.0410232148.618b4998@posting.google.c  om:

> Basides Norton, what's the next best disk diagnosis/defrag app?



For defragmenter:

PerfectDisk

Diskeeper



For disk diagnosis, depends on what you want to diagnose.  Not sure

there is anything that will test a disk more thoroughly than SpinRite.



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For disk diagnosis it's best to use the manufacturer's own software (plus it's free).  For defragmentation I haven't found a good freeware one, but there's Diskeeper which is commercially available and VoptXP which is available as a download - both do a good job.

mrbog wrote:



> Basides Norton, what's the next best disk diagnosis/defrag app?



Since defragging has little value on most PCs, my definition of best

is cheapest -- meaning the one included with XP.

--

Cheers, Bob

On Sun, 24 Oct 2004 09:25:30 -0400, Bob Willard

<BobwBSGS@TrashThis.comcast.net> wrote:



>mrbog wrote:

> 

>

>Since defragging has little value on most PCs, my definition of best

>is cheapest -- meaning the one included with XP.



On what basis do you say that "defragging has little value on most

PCs"? My experience it that it depends on how much free space you have

on the disk partition, but that disk fragmentation can make a

significant difference to Windows performance. On my own system, where

none of the partitions approach half full, the boot partition gets

very fragmented, but I would have to admit that this doesn't seem to

slow things down perceptibly. On my wife's system, which has the same

motherboard,  an only slightly slower processor, and a comparable hard

disk, but where, for "historical" reasons, the boot partition only has

15-20% free space, there is an easily perceptible slowdown

(particularly of program loading) when this partition needs

defragmenting, and a comparable speedup when this has been done. Both

systems have their swap files on separate dedicated partitions, so

this isn't a swap file fragmentation problem.



Please respond to the Newsgroup, so that others may benefit from the exchange.

Peter R. Fletcher

Peter R. Fletcher wrote:

> On Sun, 24 Oct 2004 09:25:30 -0400, Bob Willard

> <BobwBSGS@TrashThis.comcast.net> wrote:

>

> 

>

>

> On what basis do you say that "defragging has little value on most

> PCs"? My experience it that it depends on how much free space you have

> on the disk partition, but that disk fragmentation can make a

> significant difference to Windows performance. On my own system, where

> none of the partitions approach half full, the boot partition gets

> very fragmented, but I would have to admit that this doesn't seem to

> slow things down perceptibly. On my wife's system, which has the same

> motherboard,  an only slightly slower processor, and a comparable hard

> disk, but where, for "historical" reasons, the boot partition only has

> 15-20% free space, there is an easily perceptible slowdown

> (particularly of program loading) when this partition needs

> defragmenting, and a comparable speedup when this has been done. Both

> systems have their swap files on separate dedicated partitions, so

> this isn't a swap file fragmentation problem.

>

> Please respond to the Newsgroup, so that others may benefit from the exchange.

> Peter R. Fletcher



On the half-dozen NT/W2K/XP PCs I've had, I've never noticed any difference

in performance resulting from running defrag.  On the half-dozen W9x/W3.x

PCs I've had, I kinda think I sometimes noticed a difference, but it was

marginal at most.  Some of those PCs - esp. the W3.x and early W9x ones -

included parts, boot and non-boot, that were >75% full {since I did guess

wrong about part. growth, and did not juggle the parts or the files until

defrag would no longer run}; still, defrag made little or no difference.



By contrast, my experience with RCs (you know, Real Computers ;-) running

real OSs) showed some substantial-to-enormous gains from defragging.  There

were many reports from VMS users on the value of defragging -- even from

the early years of VMS when its filesystem did not support on-line defragging

and so required shutting down the system for a backup/restore cycle to

accomplish a defrag.  I did a survey a few times of the dozen or more VMS

RCs on which I had accounts, and found that the HDs averaged, IIRC, ~85% full.

--

Cheers, Bob

On 23 Oct 2004 22:48:11 -0700, dterrors@hotmail.com (mrbog) wrote:



>Basides Norton, what's the next best disk diagnosis/defrag app?



Vopt.





Have a nice one...



Trent



Budweiser:   Helping ugly people have sex since 1876!

On Sun, 24 Oct 2004 17:59:05 -0400, Bob Willard

<BobwBSGS@TrashThis.comcast.net> wrote:



>Peter R. Fletcher wrote: 

>

>On the half-dozen NT/W2K/XP PCs I've had, I've never noticed any difference

>in performance resulting from running defrag.  On the half-dozen W9x/W3.x

>PCs I've had, I kinda think I sometimes noticed a difference, but it was

>marginal at most.  Some of those PCs - esp. the W3.x and early W9x ones -

>included parts, boot and non-boot, that were >75% full {since I did guess

>wrong about part. growth, and did not juggle the parts or the files until

>defrag would no longer run}; still, defrag made little or no difference.

>

>By contrast, my experience with RCs (you know, Real Computers ;-) running

>real OSs) showed some substantial-to-enormous gains from defragging.  There

>were many reports from VMS users on the value of defragging -- even from

>the early years of VMS when its filesystem did not support on-line defragging

>and so required shutting down the system for a backup/restore cycle to

>accomplish a defrag.  I did a survey a few times of the dozen or more VMS

>RCs on which I had accounts, and found that the HDs averaged, IIRC, ~85% full.



Hmmm! The only other difference here is that I am running XP Pro and

my wife is running XP Home. I don't think that is likely to be

relevant.



Please respond to the Newsgroup, so that others may benefit from the exchange.

Peter R. Fletcher

"Peter R. Fletcher" <pfletch(at)fletchers(hyphen)uk.com> wrote in message

news:kmkpn05jvim3ujkvlpbl23sbtn8d5t8us1@4ax.com...  

> On Sun, 24 Oct 2004 17:59:05 -0400, Bob Willard

> <BobwBSGS@TrashThis.comcast.net> wrote:

> 

>

> Hmmm! The only other difference here is that I am running XP Pro and

> my wife is running XP Home. I don't think that is likely to be

> relevant.

>

> Please respond to the Newsgroup, so that others may benefit from the

> exchange.

> Peter R. Fletcher



In the February, 2004 issue of PC World magazine, they reported their

evaluation of defragmenters. Here's the pertinent excerpt from their

article...



"When the PC World Test Center set out to determine the effectiveness of the

defrag utilities in our set of suites, plus that of Diskeeper 8 from

Executive Software, our analysts found no evidence that defragmentation

enhanced performance. On a desktop system from the PC World office with a

heavily used, never-defragmented hard drive, the lab conducted speed tests

using a range of applications before and after defragmenting the drive with

each utility. In the end, the Test Center saw no significant performance

improvement after defragmenting with any program. This result flies in the

face of the perceived wisdom that fragmentation hinders performance, though

much older PCs (with slower and smaller hard drives) and heavily used

servers may benefit more from defragging."



I might add that about three years ago, some friends and myself performed

rather extensive tests of a number of third-party defragmenters as well as

the built-in defragmenters in Windows 98 and Windows Me, and to some extent,

in Windows 95. Our objective was to determine which one(s) were most

effective in defragmenting a hard disk in terms of enhancing speed

performance. To our surprise (at least for most of us!) we came to the

conclusion that *none* of the defragmenters resulted in any performance

enhancement. We measured some of the common tasks undertaken by the computer

user, e.g., bootup time, accessing programs, search & replace functions,

manipulating digital images, and the like. The conclusion we drew was

identical to that of PC World, i.e., there was no meaningful performance

enhancement resulting from the use of defragmenters. At the time we

concluded these tests Windows XP was just coming online so we didn't conduct

any extensive tests on that OS, but from some cursory tests we ran using

XP's defragmenting utility, our previous conclusions concerning the

ineffectiveness of the defragmentation process remained unchanged.



Art

On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 08:35:41 -0400, "Art" <noonehere@longone.net>

wrote:

 

>

>In the February, 2004 issue of PC World magazine, they reported their

>evaluation of defragmenters. Here's the pertinent excerpt from their

>article...

>

>"When the PC World Test Center set out to determine the effectiveness of the

>defrag utilities in our set of suites, plus that of Diskeeper 8 from

>Executive Software, our analysts found no evidence that defragmentation

>enhanced performance. On a desktop system from the PC World office with a

>heavily used, never-defragmented hard drive, the lab conducted speed tests

>using a range of applications before and after defragmenting the drive with

>each utility. In the end, the Test Center saw no significant performance

>improvement after defragmenting with any program. This result flies in the

>face of the perceived wisdom that fragmentation hinders performance, though

>much older PCs (with slower and smaller hard drives) and heavily used

>servers may benefit more from defragging."

>

>I might add that about three years ago, some friends and myself performed

>rather extensive tests of a number of third-party defragmenters as well as

>the built-in defragmenters in Windows 98 and Windows Me, and to some extent,

>in Windows 95. Our objective was to determine which one(s) were most

>effective in defragmenting a hard disk in terms of enhancing speed

>performance. To our surprise (at least for most of us!) we came to the

>conclusion that *none* of the defragmenters resulted in any performance

>enhancement. We measured some of the common tasks undertaken by the computer

>user, e.g., bootup time, accessing programs, search & replace functions,

>manipulating digital images, and the like. The conclusion we drew was

>identical to that of PC World, i.e., there was no meaningful performance

>enhancement resulting from the use of defragmenters. At the time we

>concluded these tests Windows XP was just coming online so we didn't conduct

>any extensive tests on that OS, but from some cursory tests we ran using

>XP's defragmenting utility, our previous conclusions concerning the

>ineffectiveness of the defragmentation process remained unchanged.

>

>Art

>



My experience doesn't contradict their findings (or yours) unless the

fragmented partition is also quite (> 80%) full. I would be interested

to know how much free space there was on the test partitions.



Please respond to the Newsgroup, so that others may benefit from the exchange.

Peter R. Fletcher