PerfectDisk Blog from Raxco.com| Defrag Software

Win the WoW war on MPQ files

                            

The Dow may hit 10,000 again someday and World of Warcraft (WoW) interest may wane someday, but for now, both seem a long way off. Blizzard Entertainment's wildly popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) now boasts over 11.5 million monthly subscribers. And many of these subscribers are PerfectDIsk users, who we hear from all the time.                         

Gamers such as WoW players are always looking for ways to boost their system's performance and do whatever tweaking they can to get an advantage. So naturally, defragmenting files is an aspect of that, along with total free space consolidation. 

But time after time, day after day, two things in particular for WoW players stand out with PerfectDisk -- AutoPilot Scheduling and Selected Files defrag. A nasty problem for WoW players is WoW's MPQ files, which include data, graphics, sound and more. MPQs can get large and they can get badly fragmented. And the result is lost performance.

So lots of WoW users use PerfectDisk to completely defragment their drives, including the MPQ files, to boost their performance. Because of PerfectDisk's free space consolidation, they will fragment more slowly anyway. Many users will use Selected Files Defrag to clean up the MPQ files. And WoW players also will use AutoPilot Scheduling to ensure a complete defrag after receiving a WoW patch from Blizzard.

                                       

Winning the WoW fragmentation war one drive -- or one file -- at a time. Automatically.

Désolé du retard, 10 vient!

                            

Sorry for the delay, 10 is coming! French and German versions of PerfectDisk 10 are on their way, and will be available in about a month.

Vielen Dank für Ihre Geduld.

A heartbeat for virtual machine performance

                               

VMware's vCenter Server Heartbeat is VMware's latest offering that optimizes availability for VMware vCenter Server. It helps ensure maximum uptime for virtual data center infrastructures for VMware sites, and according to VMware, "ensures consistent operation and uptime."

                     

That's smart, and as Charles Babcock wrote in this week's edition of Information Week, it makes sense because a recent VMware customer survey showed that business continuity - not server consolidation - is the No. 1 reason companies buy virtualization software. IT departments are virtualizing key applications to ensure that they keep running even if a server fails."

While we're not in the disaster recovery or failover business, we can certainly relate to vCenter Server Heartbeat with our new PerfectDisk 10 Virtual Enterprise Edition (VEE). And to VMware's vMotion, which can shift a running VM from one physical server to another. It's the same concept behind VEE. We look at the whole picture - or all the VMs associated with a physical machine. If a critical VM is doing critical work, PerfectDisk 10 VEE's patented Virtual Awareness detects that and makes sure the physical machine's heartbeat doesn't fail. Resource usage is detected, understood, and defragmentation is allocated accordingly. Resource contention and overload is prevented. And virtual machine performance, for all VMs, improves, as does the physical machine. No heart failure.

As Babcock notes, "VMware keeps nudging expectations forward." We know your expectations for PerfectDisk remain high. So do ours.

                               

That's why we're moving forward as well.

Business Week snubs PerfectDisk

                            

Sure, how else are we, who pride ourselves in superior customer service, supposed to feel when we don't see our name listed in Business Week's March 2nd cover story on Extreme Customer Service -- In a Tough Year, 25 Companies That Get it Right? Okay, never mind the fact that the 25 companies listed are multi-billion dollar companies. Companies like #1-rated Amazon,com, The Ritz-Carlton, American Express, BMW and Apple. This is the kind of story that really grabs our attention, because customer service really is important to us and we try hard to get it right. And we think we do, most of the time. And when we don't, we try to fix it, whatever it is.

                                 

So we'll just carry on without the cover story recognition. And we'll do what the Business Week champs are doing...."flexing our workforce" (we've added service and support staff), "technology investment" (we're expanding a new CRM system, utilizing direct remote assistance more), and "babying our customers" (just ask them or see the online reviews people post unsolicited). We have a rapidly expanding online user community where users can express views and exchange ideas.

No, we don't always get it right. Which is why we're out there listening and continually trying to improve ourselves. And when we mess up, we hear it. And we try to fix it.

                  

Okay, here's the article if you want to read it. Interesting stuff, even without a mention of PerfectDisk or defrag.