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PerfectDisk defrag blog has been migrated

                                

Today we officially switch over the PerfectDisk blog to a new platform which has more capabilities and flexibility. For those of you who subscribe, you should continue to receive automatic updates. If for some reason you do not, I ask you to please subscribe from the new site. For those of you on Typepad, a reminder that the URL for the blog is www.perfectdiskblog.com.

Thanks for your continued reading, and keep the comments coming!

                                 

Space -- the bonus frontier

                           

Reasonable people can have reasonable disagreements, and often do. Politics, music, travel, to name a few. And of course, our favorite - defragmentation. And while we naturally feel PerfectDisk gives you the best defrag, what often makes the decision to use PerfectDisk a no brainer is the large amount of functionality beyond disk defragmentation and free space consolidation - PerfectDisk's Space Management component.

From freeing up space consumed by unnecessary files to finding and removing duplicate files to seeing a full view of a drive, many users find these tools invaluable. And the fact that they come included with a top-line defragger is all the better.

                         

Leslie Alder of Austin, Texas writes that she was leaning towards PerfectDisk because she was impressed with the free space consolidation "that other tools I looked at did not address very well. But then I came across the Space Management piece of PerfectDisk and I was sold. I do a lot of video editing and I love being able to clean up my drive. After the cleanup and a defrag, my laptop and desktop run like new."

To the moon, Leslie.

Help Desk Geek -- Best defrag software for IT admins

                         

Writing at the Help Desk Geek web site, which covers "Computer Tips for IT Pros," systems analyst Aseem Kishore discusses the technical merits of defragmenting, while acknowledging the ongoing debate about its worthiness. Following his investigations and research, he summarizes that "PerfectDisk has made me a believer in defragmenting again and I think it will make a big difference if you are a heavy PC user. It's great for IT environments." You can read the entire post here.

If Aseem doesn't make you a believer, surely Shrek can...or at least put you in a good mood.

                                     

Your physical or virtual defrag -- green and lean

                          

As the world commemorates Earth Day 2009 and the entire global community moves environmental discussions to the forefront, it's the perfect opportunity to look at the defragmentation issue from an environmental perspective. Industry reports abound about the tough time PC makers are going through now, with netbook sales doing well, but other PC shipments suffering along with the rest of the economy. As families and businesses do everything they can to squeeze dollars and resources wherever and however they can, a new computer is turning into one thing that gets delayed. And a good defrag helps extend computer life.

With fewer PCs being purchased, fewer are being discarded and recycled. But what about the computer you're running? With a single-pass defrag strategy that in essence "shrinks" the drive, PerfectDisk users save on the computing resources they use. This is in contrast to typical multi-pass defraggers that need to churn and churn away at the problem. You won't want to turn your PC off at night or any other time with a multi-pass defragmenter, because chances are good you won't have a completely defragged drive. And if you've got just one big, nasty fragmented file, PerfectDisk users can quickly and easily defragment that one file and then move on to their other business.

                                    

PerfectDisk is doing its part on the virtualization front as well. As businesses move heavily to the virtual server model, we're helping them get the most out of this setup. As businesses utilize fewer physical servers and look to reduce their energy consumption and carbon footprints, PerfectDisk's exclusive Virtual Aware Defrag helps ensure they'll be as efficient as possible. And of course, the same single-pass strategy applies here as well, ensuring the most efficient use of resources.

Here at PerfectDisk headquarters, besides the "easy" things like using all recycled paper and more electronic software distribution over physical, we've reduced our energy consumption over 25%, despite an increase in heating degree days of 78.7%. More virtual machines, fewer physical machines, resulting in less energy consumed and a smaller footprint. Even as we've grown the business and added employees.

We're all aware of our impact on the environment more than ever now. Every little bit helps.

In its own small way, PerfectDisk is as well.    

                           

Multimedia instructional design worthy of an Emmy -- PerfectDisk included

                                     

To win an Emmy award requires great passion, talent and world-class dedication to your craft. Novus Technic (www.novustechnic.com), of Santa Clarita, California, has two Emmys to the credit of its staff and strategic partners. The company provides instructional and web design and development services to organizations large and small. Its web development client list includes Baxter Healthcare, Yokohama Tires, Disney, Nissan Motorsports, Bank of America, and Toyota. The term "world-class" comes to mind.

                                     

Novus is in the business of creating and doing exceptional work for its clients. It's not in the business of promoting, and certainly not in the business of promoting something outside the company. As noted above, it has a client list that any company would value greatly. So imagine our surprise -- and pride -- when we received word that Novus had emailed its customer base for the first time ever. Indeed, the email message began with these words: "we have NEVER sent an e-mail blast to our entire customer list before, and probably never will again, but we feel very strongly about what we're about to recommend."

                   

The letter then details the reasons for it being sent:

"We have been using Raxco's PerfectDisk defrag software for many years. Their newest version, PerfectDisk 10, has finally filled in the few gaps in desired features we always wanted to see. We run this software on ALL of our machines, individual PCs, our office server and our web servers. We have NO financial interest in this software or company, we don't even receive a discount other than their public coupons--it's just such good software we wanted to share it with you.
 
PerfectDisk is cheap and powerful. It runs in the background and keeps your hard disks defragmented at all times. It uses almost no resources and never slows your machines down. PerfectDisk does a far, far better job than the built-in Windows defragger and it does something that Windows can't do--it can defrag your startup and system files on reboot.
 
We have found noticeable improvements in machine speed when using this software. Our machines boot quicker, files open faster, and processes run quicker. The software is tested and endorsed by Microsoft and is perfectly safe for all Windows machines."

Passion and dedication to excellence lead to award-winning performances. In Hollywood, data centers, and homes around the world.

                    

           

 

Resize your partitions in Vista/Windows 7 -- a better way

                              

Many Vista (and Windows 7 Beta and Windows Server 2008) users are happy to have the ability to resize partitions with Microsoft's built-in Disk Manager. With this built-in tool, users have the ability to dynamically resize partitions. Of course, like many things built by Microsoft into the OS, there are third-party options available that provide more robust capabilities than Vista’s Disk Manager. While I would rarely if ever recommend using Windows’ built-in defragmenter (insert smile here!), I’ll concede that there are people using the built-in Disk Manager to resize partitions on their drives. With the tool, users can shrink a single partition with unused space, and then create a new partition in the resulting free space, as well as extend a current partition if there is available free space after it.

                    

Ah, but there’s a potential problem. Some users have lots of space but very little room to shrink. What to do? The real issue is that certain data is placed at the end of the disk or partition. But you want it at the front of the drive in order to repartition. You can accomplish this with PerfectDisk’s SMARTPlacement defrag (or Consolidate Free Space defrag). All your files will be moved to the front of the drive, clearing up your drive to be able to shrink it, and then you can resize your partitions.

Your partitions, but not magic. PerfectDisk -- defrag for your partitions. Smarter.

               

The March Madness productivity issue -- maybe not so much in 2009

Every March, much of the United States gets wrapped up in what has become to be known as "March Madness," a 3-week tournament of college basketball teams vying for the national championships. For those of you outside the US, think of a lighter version of the World Cup. With all the interest, and also with many of the first-round games played during normal working hours, there is always a lot written and discussed here about lost productivity in the US work force. Last year, the estimates were close to $2 billion.

Many will debate the validity of those numbers. It really depends on the job. If one works an 8-hour day and spends an hour watching basketball and not doing his or her work, I'll agree that's lost productivity and not what the company has in mind when they hand the employee a paycheck. But if the employee is working 10 or 12 hours a day, including some from home or wherever in this non-stop work day many people have, then watching a little basketball for a break may actually be a good thing.

                                  

Indeed, Liz Wolgemuth, writing for US News and World Report, states that Challenger, Gray and Christmas, the firm that was most often quoted for lost productivity numbers, is looking at things differently this year. "In light of the fact that employers have more important things to worry about, we feel that any attempt to estimate the impact of March Madness on productivity would be counterproductive and inappropriate," said John Challenger in a statement. He even goes further to say that watching March Madness this year might be good for employee morale.

It can be the same thing for your defrag. If you have a report to get done today, or this week, you'll get it done one way or the other. If your drive is a mess with fragmented files and fragmented free space, you're not going to not get your report done. But if your drive is a mess, getting that report done is going take more time and be a lot more frustrating as you wait for the file system to put the pieces back together again.

So sit back, make sure you have PerfectDisk StealthPatrol or AutoPilot Scheduling defrag set up, and enjoy the games....

                            

With a perfectly defragmented drive.

Artificial? No. Smarter? Yes. Your MFT? Just fine, thank you

                      

I've written about this before, but since we still receive questions or comments on this topic, I'm doing so again as a review. Uses sometimes ask us why PerfectDisk does not change the size of the Master File Table (MFT). Other defragmenters do it and, hey, changing something seems pretty cool. Well, this is another area where we think PerfectDisk is a little smarter.

When an NTFS drive is formatted, it creates the $MFT, which contains a fixed number of records which can used. As files are created, these records are used. Eventually, the pre-allocated number of records is filled up and the $MFT needs to grow, adding another chunk of file records. Immediately adjacent to the $MFT, the MFT Reserved Zone is created. By default, the MFT Reserved Zone is 12.5% of the drive and goes from the first record of the MFT to the first non-free cluster after the last MFT record. If you have a 100GB drive, then the Reserved Zone is going to be 12.5GB - quite large! If you look in the Windows Explorer/Properties on a drive, the free space shown is the total of both INSIDE and OUTSIDE the Reserved Zone.

The MFT Reserved Zone is created specifically to allow the $MFT to grow in a contiguous fashion. When the $MFT fills up, it allocates the next chunk from the free space located in the MFT Reserved Zone. NTFS will avoid putting files inside the Reserved Zone unless you get into a low free space condition. It is not necessary to artificially pre-allocate additional space for the $MFT in order to keep it from growing fragmented. 

A smarter MFT means a smarter defrag.

                  

PerfectDisk 10 Service Pack 1 (Build 100)

                  

PerfectDisk 10 Build 100 is now available. Variousbugs have been fixed, and new Active Directory management functionality has been added to PerfectDisk 10 for Exchange.

You can "Check For Updates" under the Product Resources tab in PerfectDisk, or wait for Autoupdate.