Diskeeper 10 Server Enterprise Edition

More the amount of fragmented files on your disk, the longer and harder your

hard drive has to slog to access data. Manually defragmenting each and every

hard disk on the network is impractical. Diskeeper is an automatic disk de-fragmenter,

which seeks to ease your pain. It has a feature called Smart Scheduling, through

which it keeps track of the number of files moved every time it runs on each

volume.

It schedules its operation based on the number of fragmented files it finds

during each defragmentation cycle. If the number is high, it automatically

schedules itself to run more often. Conversely, after each de-fragmentation

process, it increases the time period before next defragmentation.

Diskeeper can keep a log of all events such as files moved during

defragmentation, disk information, etc. You can also set the CPU priority, ie

how much CPU resources the tool should use for defragmentation. Its Frag Shield

feature lets you configure Master File Tables (MFT) and paging files to prevent

them from being fragmented. Diskeeper Boot-Time Scheduler can be used to

defragment these files.

The tool comes bundled with another feature called Intelligent File Access

Acceleration Sequencing Technology (I-FAAST) that helps provide faster access to

files. According to Diskeeper, when I-FAAST is enabled during defragmentation,

it runs some inbuilt benchmarks on disk volumes to find their performance

characteristics.

Then it monitors those volumes for file access frequency to determine which

files were requested most often. Based on this information, the tool positions

them for faster access later on.

Diskeeper is easy to configure and use. When we defragmented a server's

disk (SCSI) drives, the CPU consumption didn't go beyond the 10 % mark.

Moreover, we were able to comfortably work with defragmentation running in the

background. The disk didn't slow down and the system performance was

satisfactory as well.

Bottom Line: Diskeeper provides far more features than the Windows

defragmentation utility. But given its high price, you might want to first

evaluate your needs carefully before buying it.