If you're like me, just a few years back, I'd never heard of defragging my hard drive... then one day I read a column in the paper about ways to speed up my PC; something I really needed to do and I learned about defragging. Mind you, that was when I had a 10GB hard drive!

Today, hard drives are bigger, MUCH bigger. For less than $600, you can purchase a complete name-brand personal computer, including a flat-panel monitor and a 160GB hard drive. Dell offers drives up to 500GB (50 times the capacity of the 10GB drive I had then. The one above is a gigantic 600GBs!! Just a few years ago, PCs with hard drives bigger than 1GB were a rarity. Now, even laptop PCs with 100GB drives are pretty common.

As hard drive capacities keep getting bigger, files are also growing in size. Video files can exceed 1GB and image files from photo-editing applications often are 300MB. With high-definition video just around the corner and the digital camera megapixel arms race escalating, file sizes will continue to skyrocket. I watched a shop at home TV program a few nights ago advertising a Canon SLR digital camera rated at 8.2 megapixels. I still am using my Minolta Dimage 3.2, but that's a whole new future column.

Big drives and big files result in far more disk fragmentation than just a few years ago. And with these large files often broken into hundreds, or perhaps thousands of fragments, system performance can quickly slow to a snail pace. Every hard drive stores files in chunks called clusters. If you're using Windows XP, clusters usually are 4,096 bytes (4KB) in size. A file of that size or smaller needs just one cluster. But a file that is 4,097 bytes in size requires two clusters (leaving most of the second one empty). A 50MB file uses more than 12,200 clusters.

In an ideal world, all of a file's clusters would be located adjacent to each other in one long, unbroken chain. With contiguous clusters, a hard drive's performance improves. Files can be read more quickly since the drive's read/write heads don't need to move a great deal.
 
But that's theory. In the real world, it simply doesn't work out that way. Files almost always are stored in clusters that are scattered across the drive, often with no more than a few next to each other. This is fragmentation, the point of this whole column. The result is degraded system performance that continues to get worse as a disk's content becomes increasingly fragmented through ordinary use as files are created, deleted, and modified. Fragmentation can't be avoided, but it can be controlled.

Disk drive capacity doubles roughly every 18 months. In this environment of spiraling drive capacity and enormous file sizes, the need to defragment more frequently is essential to maintaining disk health and high performance levels. Once I found out about it, I tried using the Windows utility, yes, it's true, Windows includes a built-in disk defragmentation utility. Is it enough? No way! I got frustrated really fast when it would hang and never finish, plus other glitches. My usual problem had to do with bullet number four. The manual defragmenter in Windows is a band-aid solution. Why:

• Does not include a native scheduler, it must be started manually for each use
• Not capable of performing complete defragmentation
• Does not contain advanced sequencing technology to increase file access time
• Is usually run reactively only after PC performance deteriorates
• Cannot be used across a network in any capacity
• Designed for a time when 3GB drives were the norm and file sizes were much smaller, it often cannot defragment large files or large volumes
• High resource usage that severely taxes the PC while it runs
• Does not consolidate free space
• Runs very slow

I finally discovered a solution that I've been using for a long time now. It's called Diskeeper. I was able to pickup a copy of the latest version, Diskeeper 10, at the Showstoppers event I wrote about in my last column.

By performing defragmentation every day, performance loss can be avoided. Handling file fragmentation as it occurs keeps defragmentation times short and system resource consumption small. The alternative, performing a weekly or monthly defragmentation is almost certain to run longer and will incur a performance penalty from the daily buildup of file fragmentation. When a file is fragmented, it takes longer to read and write. But the effects of fragmentation are far more widespread and serious: Slow performance, long boot times, random crashes and freeze-ups - even a complete inability to boot up at all. Many PC users mistakenly blame these problems on the operating system, when disk fragmentation often is the actual culprit. Fragmentation makes the hard drive work much harder, shortening its lifespan. Diskeeper solves these problems through regular use. Fortunately, Diskeeper can be fully automated, running without any user attention needed.

The Diskeeper 10 Home Edition, designed for us less technical home users whose systems do not need to be managed remotely, can defragment volumes of up to 768GB each (up from 512GB in Diskeeper 9). It's also priced at a reasonable $29.95, available for download at www.diskeeper.com where you can also download a free, trial copy.

Diskeeper is primarily designed as a "Set It and Forget It" disk defragmenter. This is what really sold me on it as I don't even have to think about it once I set it... now that's the kind of program that really works for me!

To do this, it creates a Windows service. The service allows Diskeeper to run in the background while other applications are running. Yup, you can go about your normal routine with no problems. As long as the operating system is up and running, Diskeeper can defragment your disks, whether the user is logged on or not.

After installation, the Diskeeper service starts automatically each time the computer is restarted. The Diskeeper service runs all the time, whether or not defragmentation is occurring. This service (DkService) uses very little system resources, and only a few seconds of CPU time each week.

Here's what the Diskeeper window looks like when opened manually, with a quickie rundown on its various functions:

Menu Bar: Alternative access to the features from the Toolbar and Quick Launch pane.
Toolbar: Offers quick access to commonly-used controls.
Quick Launch Pane: Provides easy access to commonly-used
Computer Pane: Lists all supported disk volumes detected on the computer. Displays general information about each volume and schedules that have been established for them.
Tabbed Controls: The tabs in the Dashboard area allow quick selection among the Volume Map, Job Report, Job Log, and Historical Report.
Dashboard Area: This is the main "Operations Center" for Diskeeper. Each tabbed pane shows a different aspect of your disks' condition.
Status Bar: Displays the progress of currently running Diskeeper tasks. Also shows folder location, name of file being moved, size of the file fragment being moved, and total file size.

A couple of the new features in Diskeeper 10 are:

Breakthrough I-FAAST Technology
Intelligent File Access Acceleration Sequencing Technology (I-FAAST) improves file access and creation by an average of 10 percent to 20 percent, and by as much as 80 percent. When I-FAAST is enabled, Diskeeper runs benchmarks on the disk volumes to learn their performance characteristics. Diskeeper then continually monitors volumes to determine which files are requested most often.

I-FAAST uses an analysis technique that prevents Diskeeper from being "fooled" by files that have been recently accessed.
Using collected monitoring information, Diskeeper sequences files to take best advantage of both the logical characteristics and physical characteristics of the volume. The sequencing process is integrated with background defragmentation, making its operation transparent. I-FAAST intelligence allows Diskeeper to adapt to changing situations; if the demands on a given system change (such as long-dormant files suddenly being frequently accessed), Diskeeper adjusts its behavior.

I/O Smart Enhancements
Diskeeper's I/O Smart has been enhanced to completely eliminate performance slows related to disk I/Os incurred during defragmentation. I/O Smart technology actively "listens" for I/O requests. During a Diskeeper defragmentation job, if another application or process needs access to the hard drive, Diskeeper intelligently pauses defragmentation until the other program's I/O requests are fulfilled. Once that happens, Diskeeper gets the go-ahead to resume defragmentation until another request comes along. Combined with its high-speed engine, Diskeeper can easily defragment using the "spaces" between I/O requests, even on busy servers.

Core Defragmentation Engine Enhancements
Improvements to innovative Diskeeper technology provide enhanced defragmentation in extremely low free space conditions (even for very large files) and extremely thorough free space defragmentation. Further advancements to "comprehensive" defragmentation consolidate a volume's free space into one or a small handful of chunks.

Selectable Disk and CPU Priority
A user can set the disk and CPU priorities at which Diskeeper prescheduled and on-demand manual defragmentation jobs run.

Simultaneous Analysis or Defragmentation
You can analyze and/or defragment more than one disk volume at a time. Different Diskeeper editions support different numbers of simultaneous operations.

Boot-Time Defragmentation
Defragments files at boot-time that cannot be moved safely when Windows is running. It also defragments or consolidates directories, which depending on the version of Windows can't be moved during on-line defragmentation.

I know this all may seem pretty complicated, but it really isn't. Remember, it's "set it and forget it" feature is just that... once it's installed and you do some pretty basic configuration, you literally set it and that's it!

Installation is also pretty easy. Diskeeper 10 installs from a CD-ROM or from your hard drive if you've downloaded a copy from the web page and takes just a few minutes. Once installed, it can be configured for "Set It And Forget It" operation. Prior to doing that, here are a few tips I received:

Analyze Volumes
Following installation, click the Analyze icon to analyze all disk volumes on the target system to obtain a baseline measurement of fragmentation.

Set Up Frag Shield
Set up Frag Shield to guard against Master File Table (MFT) fragmentation.

1. Click the "gears" toolbar icon to select Configure option. 
2. Click Frag Shield and then the Frag Shield Edit button to display the Frag Shield Configuration window. 
3. Choose the option to configure MFT to the recommended size calculated by Diskeeper. 

Enabling Diskeeper's Frag Shield Capability protects the Master File Table
and Paging files from becoming fragmented.

Set Up Boot-Time Defragmentation
Depending on the version of Windows, certain key system files are not able to be moved while the operating system is running. The Boot-Time defragmentation feature defragments the paging file and/or consolidates the MFT as the system boots. After running the Boot-Time operation once, regular defragmentation and Frag Shield can help prevent the MFT and paging file from becoming fragmented again.

To set up Boot-Time defragmentation, click the Boot-Time icon in the toolbar and then follow the steps shown in the following screen image.

• Run Boot-Time defragmentation on one disk volume at a time, because it can be time consuming and the computer cannot be used for any other purpose while the boot-time program runs. 
• Defragment volumes before running Boot-Time defragmentation. Doing so creates a contiguous free space into which directories and/or paging files can be moved. It's also good practice to run a defragmentation job after a boot-time job has completed. 

• Run online defragmentation after a Boot-Time job has completed.

Enable 'Set It And Forget It Mode'
Starting Set It and Forget It jobs requires just a few mouse clicks.

1. Open the Set It and Forget It option in the Quick Launch pane.
2. Select Primary Defragmentation Job. When the Job Properties window opens, select one or more volumes.
3. Specify the schedule. (Smart Scheduling is recommended.) The following section provides more details about Smart Scheduling, a key feature in Diskeeper 10.
4. Choose a Defragmentation Method. (The "Recommended" option provides the best balance between file defragmentation and free space consolidation.)
5. Enable Large File Defragmentation. Scroll to the bottom of the Defragmentation Method window from the previous step, then click the check box. This important option emphasizes improvements in file access over 100-percent defragmentation of large files.

Smart Scheduling
With Smart Scheduling, users don't need to make decisions about when to defragment. It's all handled by Diskeeper. Use Smart Scheduling to let Diskeeper establish optimum defragmentation schedules.

The underlying methodology is elegant in its simplicity.

When Smart Scheduling is enabled, Diskeeper keeps track of the number of files moved every time it runs on each disk volume. When the number of fragmented files moved during a defragmentation run increases, Diskeeper is automatically scheduled to run more often. When the number of files moved decreases, the interval between defragmentation jobs is lengthened.

The Smart Scheduling option is available within the Schedule Type drop-down list in the Job Schedule page of the Primary or Secondary Defragmentation Job Properties dialog.

Enable I-FAAST Mode
I-FAAST improves file access and creation on NTFS volumes by up to 80 percent. It runs special benchmarks to learn about the volume's performance and them monitors it continuously to determine which files are requested most often.

Since I-FAAST learns over time, it can take up to a week for the full benefits to become apparent.

1. Click the I-FAAST icon to open the I-FAAST Job Properties window. 
2. Choose one or more volumes. 
3. Click the checkbox to enable I-FAAST. 

That's about all there is to the install. I was then able to sit back and not worry about the old bugaboos of having to remember to defrag regularly. The new version has been working like a charm for the last 6 weeks, so I think I am justified in saying it's a real winner.

That's it for now, until next time, have fun with electronics and computers.

Lou

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