PerfectDisk Blog from Raxco.com| Defrag Software

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.

               

PC Magazine says "make Vista great" with PerfectDisk

                             

PC Magazine has been running an online series on how to "make Vista great." In today's article, Make Vista Great, Part 3: Improve Performance and Stability, David A. Karp gets into some key areas as to how to make Vista run better. One of his topics is "Mind your hard drive," where he points out that "the speed of your hard drive has significant impact on your PC's performance and stability." He then goes on to point out the limitations of the Vista Disk Defragmenter utility and some of the reasons that PerfectDisk is the way to go, including making Vista "faster and healthier."

Be a superhero -- make Vista great -- find out how here.

               

Business Week -- End Runs Around Vista

                             

A recent Business Week article discusses HP and others trying to capitalize on Vista's weaknesses. It's a story we can relate to! 

          

End Runs Around Vista gets into Microsoft's partners that sell or support Vista trying to address Vista problems. It says HP has "quietly assembled a group of engineers to develop software that will let customers bypass certain features of Vista...employees on a separate skunk works team are even angling to replace Windows with an HP-assembled operating system, say three sources close to the company."

This is a bit like our story - a gold partner of Microsoft's replacing something in Vista. But ours is no skunk work or end run really, as we've been going straight at whatever built-in defragmenter Microsoft has thrown at the market -- NT, XP, Vista, etc. 

Check out the story here.

              

Windows Vista Annoyances -- it takes a book

Why is David Karp so annoyed? More importantly, what is he doing about all his annoyances?

Karp has written a book, first published in December of 2007 and already in its second printing, entitled Windows Vista Annoyances, which answers my  first question above and part of the second.  His book addresses the "quirks, unaccountable behavior, and bad design" of Microsoft's Vista OS. It has a wealth of information, with chapters like "Getting Started with Windows Vista," "The Registry," Working with Media," "Troubleshooting," "Users and Security," and much more. A great reference tool.

     

In particular, I took note of Chapter 5: Performance, which covers "speeding up your PC and getting it to work better.Get the new Glass interface working and take care of your hard disk." As Karp points out, "the best way to ensure maximum performance from your drive is to regularly - weekly or biweekly - defragment it." Music to my ears!

Karp details the good and bad of the Vista defragmenter provided by Microsoft, and also highlights PerfectDisk as his third-party defragmenter of choice for its map, advanced settings, and detailed reporting abilities. He further points out that the Vista Disk Defragmenter "doesn't offer anything close to the usability of PerfectDisk." Karp goes on to suggest using PerfectDisk to defragment the paging file.

Windows Vista Annoyances is easy to read, either from start to finish or going directly to a particular annoyance you might have. And a bit amusing too -- for example, Karp doesn't just refer to the startup logo - it's the "pompous Microsoft Windows Vista logo." Writing like that makes it enjoyable to fix the problems. 

Ultimately, the book is about getting things done. Referring to "us lowly Vista users," Karp says we have a choice: "do we continue to suffer with Windows' shortcomings, or take matters into our own hands? The point of this book is to help you solve problems."

It's a good point.

                                     

So...do WE like Vista?

There's been so much written about Vista (yes, including here) that you can find just about every perspective of whether it's good or bad and whether is a success or failure. Just last week, Eric Lai of Computerworld wrote an article in that publication entitled Developers confirm, explain why they're avoiding Windows Vista, including the results of a survey that found fewer than one in twelve programmers are currently writing programs targeting Vista. And MSNBC writing about Corporate America's rejection of Vista. And while millions and millions continue and will continue to run XP, all eyes are on Microsoft to see if they will officially extend the life of XP.

                   

But what about our developers here at Raxco? Of course, PerfectDisk supports it and was the first defragmenter to be certified for Vista by Microsoft. We knew that whatever the overall market trend was, there would still be millions of people that would expect and demand PerfectDisk to run on Vista. So that was a given. But do the developers that write the PerfectDisk code actually like Vista? It seems that, just like around the world, there are mixed results if you surveyed the team.

To start with, they definitely like the GUI - the interface is a big step up. But besides the looks, Vista has a lot more going for it that our development team applauds. Such as new technologies like Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML), BitLocker, DirectX10, restoring with Shadow Copy, fast installation and on-the-fly shrinking and expanding of volumes, to name a few.

Not surprisingly, and like many, they generally don't care for Vista's User Account Control - it's too restrictive, intrusive and generally annoying. They see it as a productivity killer, and users generally don't read the security prompts or just ignore them. And the user interface rendering model takes too many resources. Also, there are various usability issues - such as too many event logs, an overly complicated Boot Configuration Data (BCD) Editor, unimpressive search and some of the new control panels. 

But for the bottom line, with all things considered, the PerfectDisk developers generally give Vista a thumbs up. Of course, that assumes they've turned UAC off and have some hefty hardware to take advantage of Vista's good side.

Now that's certainly not going to sway corporate America or other enterprises around the world, or move millions of happy and content Windows XP users. Not to worry.

      

XP or Vista, and all others -- PerfectDisk has your back.

Microsoft certifies PerfectDisk 2008 for Vista

Microsoft has certified PerfectDisk 2008 for Vista. PerfectDisk 8 was the first defragmenter to be certified for Vista, and now PerfectDisk 2008 is the only shipping defragger certified by Microsoft. We prepare our product here, we ship it to Microsoft's approved testing facilities around the world, and then Microsoft puts its stamp of approval on it when it passes an extensive set of tests. Do users care? Some don't, many do. Many home users tell us it's a comfort thing; many businesses tell us it's a requirement.

For the many who demand it, it's ready.

        

PerfectDisk 2008 -- Go!

Welcome to PerfectDisk 2008

• PerfectDisk 2008 Professional
• PerfectDisk 2008 Server
• PerfectDisk 2008 for VMware Workstation
• PerfectDisk 2008 for VMware Server
• PerfectDisk 2008 for Exchange
• PerfectDisk 2008 for Windows Home Server

www.raxco.com 

Start your engines

A new era begins tomorrow, as we release a new family of products that we believe represents the broadest and most comprehensive offering ever by a disk defragmentation provider. With this launch, users can now ensure maximum performance and availability across their Windows environments -- PCs and laptops, servers, VMware workstation and servers, Exchange servers and even Windows Home Server systems -- enterprises, small- and medium-sized businesses, and home consumers.

With this launch, we address the requests and needs of thousands of our users and have enhanced and improved many aspects of the product, and added new products or PerfectDisk components. To be released tomorrow:

• PerfectDisk 2008 Professional
• PerfectDisk 2008 Server
• PerfectDisk 2008 for VMware Workstation
• PerfectDisk 2008 for VMware Server
• PerfectDisk 2008 for Exchange
• PerfectDisk 2008 for Windows Home Server

From the land of Hollywood, we've heard that the new demands of the 21st century demand defragmentation programs run continuously. As I've pointed out here before, that's really a coverup for the lack of being able to completely defragment all files and completely consolidate free space in a single pass. And that's what some of the world's largest companies have told us -- their environments demand the flexibility to schedule when "always-on" defragmenting is not an option. But just to make sure, you can have it your way - whatever that way is -- as we introduce StealthPatrol unattended background disk defragmentation. Combine this with our exclusive AutoPilot Scheduling, with flexible scheduling options according to your specific requirements, and you have the most complete, flexible and automated disk defragmentation software available -- and you maintain complete control.

What's new in the PerfectDisk family:

PerfectDisk 2008 Professional and PerfectDisk 2008 Server

• A brand new user interface to enhance usability and improve the user experience, including ribbons, new wizards, new graphs and more.
• Enhancements to the popular Single Defrag option, including a new Selected Files Defrag capability to defragment selected files rather than the entire drive.
• New StealthPatrol unattended background defragmentation for use when scheduling is not convenient.
• New free space management capabilities including Space Explorer that provides a bird's eye view of your drive, directories, and files.
• New Volume Shadow Copy (VSS) compatibility mode provides enhanced defragmentation of VSS environments.
• Reduced memory footprint for improved performance.
• Support for the exFAT file system for improved flash drive support.
• Vista SP1 (Professional edition) and Windows Server 2008 (Server edition) ready.

PerfectDisk 2008 for VMware Workstation and PerfectDisk 2008 for VMware Server

• A complete automated optimization solution for VMware virtual drives in accordance with VMware recommendations.
• Full defragmentation and free space consolidation of VMware vrtual drives with PerfectDisk's patented SMARTPlacement optimzation scheme to improve virtual machine performance.
• Automated reindexing of VMware internal drive structures for improved performance.
• Automated shrinking and compaction of virtual drives to reclaim space.
• Automated defragmentation, optimzation and free space consolidation of host drives to improve host performance.
• Installation required only on the host system.

PerfectDisk 2008 for Exchange

• New support for Exchange 2007 to provide total automation of data store defragmentation/compaction for reclaiming Exchange disk space and improving Exchange performance.

PerfectDisk 2008 for Windows Home Server

• All the enhancements of the Professional and Server editions now available for users in WHS environments.

Flexibility. Automation. Complete control. Users around the world asked. We listened.

Coming tomorrow.

         

            

                     

Vista - what went wrong?

Joe Wilcox of eWeek recently dove into a host of reasons why Vista has been a disappointment for Microsoft with his blog on "What Went Wrong with Windows Vista?" Despite a handful of dissenters, most of the blog's comments agree with Joe's assessment. He gives 10 reasons why the Vista OS failed to "WOW" consumers or businesses. You can check out the entire post here.

We found some interesting parallels to the defrag market. For example, Joe's Reason #10 is "Too many versions." I agree with this for Vista...and for a defragmenter. That's why we believe you shouldn't need a price sheet to rival an NFL offensive playbook when purchasing a disk defragger. And that's why we don't have special versions and different pricing (i.e. more expensive) to support large drives, complex environments, and a full-featured product. We try not to give the buyer "unnecessary buying complexity," as Joe acutely points out that Microsoft did with Vista.

Joe's Reason #7 is the "WOW went away," referring to Microsoft's initial Vista advertising campaign. We've seen some (or actually one) in the defrag space try to wow with more than is really there. But as the Hocus-pocus posts pointed out, today's consumers and business people are too smart to be fooled with a bunch of hype.

We'll continue to do our best to keep things straightforward and without unnecessary complexity.

            

PerfectDisk Rx Suite certified for Vista

Just a quick note to let you know that PerfectDisk Rx Suite has been cerified for Vista by Microsoft. The product continues to perform very well for that segment of users that just want a real simple tool to keep their PC in top shape.