PerfectDisk 8.0
- Price: £20 ($39.99: Single Licence); £93
($179.99: 5 Licence Pack); £165 ($319: 10
Licence Pack)
- Supplier: Raxco Software
- Web:
http://www.raxco.com
System Requirements:
Windows 2000, XP, 2003,Vista, 32-bit x64 and
Itanium platform; 64MB RAM (128MB recommended); 20MB
Disk Space; FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS file system.
One major contributor to the downgrade in PC
performance is disk fragmentation. Put simply when
files on your hard drive are not stored contiguously
the drive heads have to work harder trying to locate
the individual file components; this, inevitably,
results in delays and consequently the requested
file is not delivered to the desktop as fast as it
could be.
Files stored contiguously, on the other hand,
have each portion of the file following on from the
other, therefore, the drive heads are not bouncing
over different parts of the hard drive platter
desperately trying to seek the file’s component
parts.
Incontiguously stored files are said to be
fragmented and in order to restore the files to
their original contiguous order the drive needs to
be defragmented. While Windows has its own built in
defragmentation software this, unfortunately, is
only a ‘light’ version. For a full and professional
optimisation of the hard drive you need the
heavyweight defragmenting power of PerfectDisk 8.0
Effortless Defragmenting
While PerfectDisk can boast both Single and
Enterprise users the interface is surprisingly user
friendly. As standard PerfectDisk ships with a
client interface, however, for Enterprise customers
there is a free Command Center Management Module
that enables an administrator to see at a glance a
summary of fragmentation issues on managed
computers.
Fig: 1 PerfectDisk User Interface
is extremely user friendly
Think Smart
To ensure perfect optimisation PerfectDisk uses
the SMARTPlacement™ optimisation strategy. This
effectively places files on the hard disk according
to the user’s unique usage pattern. By using this
strategy both time and resources on future
defragmentation runs are greatly reduced. While many
defragmenters simply move all of the files on the
hard drive around during the defragmentation
process, PerfectDisk only moves the files that do
not conform to the user’s usage pattern,
consequently resulting in faster defragmentation of
the hard drive.
Lost In Space
A valuable asset of PerfectDisk is its
Consolidate Free Space defragmentation option. This
allows the user to not only defragment the part of
the disk containing files, but also to defragment
the free space on the hard disk too, thus creating
the largest piece of contiguous space.
Fig: 2 To defragment free space
use the Consolidate Free Space option
This option can be particularly useful prior to
re-sizing partitions or, in an Enterprise, when
compressing virtual hard drives in a virtual machine
environment.
Offline
With most defragmentation software, Windows’ own
defragmenter being a case in point, files such as
Page file, Hibernation file and files that are
currently being used are never touched.
With PerfectDisk's Offline Defragmentation option
PerfectDisk will first try to unmount the drive. If
this is not possible then you will be prompted to
schedule an offline defragmentation pass the next
time you boot your PC. The defragmentation of these
files will then take place in the pre-Windows
environment (DOS environment).
PerfectDisk can also be scheduled to run this
offline defragmentation on a regular basis every
time you boot the PC.
Fig: 3 PerfectDisk defragments
MFT, Metadata, Hibernate file and Page file.
Power to the People
With PerfectDisk’s new Power Management feature
you don’t even have to worry about running the
system on battery power. PerfectDisk can instantly
detect whether the system is running on battery
power and can decide for itself whether to start
defragmentation or, if defragmentation has started
when battery power kicks in, whether to stop the
defragmentation process to save battery power.
This option is a God send for those users with
laptops or Enterprise users who rely upon
Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS) batteries during
power outage.
Verdict
PerfectDisk requires around 5% free space to
operate and can defragment a hard drive using a
single pass. Because PerfectDisk is capable of
defragmenting the Master File table, page file,
hibernation file and all metadata no file or
directory is left unfragmented.
CPU usage is extremely low, with PerfectDisk able
to automatically detect if the drive is busy and
adjust the I/O usage accordingly, so defragmenting
in the background doesn’t then impact upon other
applications you may have running.
Disk defragmentation is a fact of life, but it
needn’t be a burden. PerfectDisk is a feature rich
defragmenting application and regular use will not
only keep your file system in tip-top condition, but
will also keep your PC running at optimum
performance.
Of all the defragmenting software I’ve used
PerfectDisk is by far the best. So much better that
it is simply Brilliant!
Rating:
- Ease Of use: 10.0
- Features: 10.0
- Value for Money: 10.0
- Overall: 10.0