PerfectDisk Blog from Raxco.com| Defrag Software

Solid State Drive (SSD) support in PerfectDisk -- standard

                            

A solid-state drive (SSD) is a data storage device that uses solid-state memory to store persistent data. It emulates a hard disk drive interface. It's a high-performance plug-and-play storage device that contains no moving parts. We're starting to see more of them, particularly in laptops, but right now they are quite pricey. Predictions vary as to when SSDs will become more mainstream, but their popularity is going to increase as prices do come down.

PerfectDisk 10's defrag engine, as well as earlier versions, works just fine with SSD. As a matter of fact, the design of PerfectDisk has been tailored for SSDs for years because of PerfectDisk's Space Restoration Technology, with its single-pass free space consolidation.

                                            

PerfectDisk helps improve the performance of SSD drives' write performance through its free space consolidation. To write a sector, the file system needs to read and merge the data, then erase and write back a data block, which is bigger than a sector, called an "erase block." The size of the sector is 1 - 4MB, which is much bigger than the sector size. By consolidating free space, the process of transferring data between erase blocks can be reduced or eliminated. As a Microsoft Certified defragmenter, PerfectDisk's use of Microsoft's defrag APIs ensures that defragmentation takes place in a safe manner.

Now, if PerfectDisk had not pioneered total single-pass free space consolidation, we might do things differently. We might put together an extra or special component and charge extra for it. But in our mind, that would be like selling a car and charging extra for breaks. We'll leave that to others.

                        

Complete and safe SD support - standard with PerfectDisk 10.

Differences between PerfectDisk 10 Pro and PerfectDisk 10 Home

                            

This post summarizes the differences between PerfectDisk 10 Professional and the PerfectDisk 10 Home Edition. Before getting to the differences, let's look at what they have in common. The answer is -- a LOT.

The PerfectDisk 10 Home Edition gives you all the power of PerfectDisk 10 Professional - the exact same Microsoft-certified disk defrag and optimization engine along with total free space consolidation, including PerfectDisk's patented SMARTPlacement optimization. No limitation on drive size. The ability to defragment drives with less than 1% free space. Exclusive MFT placement for improved performance. Exclusive defragmentation of all NTFS metadata. Windows 7 support.

And more. All the power of PerfectDisk 10 that is used by many of the world's largest businesses and government agencies.

                        

Now, let's take a look at what you do NOT get with the Home Edition.

• Automatic recycler and directory analyzer
• Duplicate file finder
• Space Explorer file and directory analyzer
• Space Reports of your files' usage and allocation
• Remote connection to another computer via PerfectDisk 10's GUI
• Installation on Windows Home Server
• Integration with Active Directory
• Integration with the PerfectDisk 10 Enterprise Console

Pro or Home, it's hard to go wrong. No decisions about drive size and core defrag functionality. It's mainly a matter of whether you want some additional space management and reporting capabilities.

The choice is yours.

            

Related Post:

New Home Edition with PerfectDisk 10

 

The world turns its eyes to Washington -- Obama and PerfectDisk

                 

Here in the metropolitan Washington, DC area, there is almost nonstop talk and planning for January 20, 2009, when an unprecedented number of people -- perhaps as many as 4 million -- converge on the city and suburbs for the inauguration of Barack Obama.

                                                      

On a busy spring day, when the Cherry Blossoms are in full bloom, as many as 4,000 tour buses crowd the city and test its ability to deal with the masses. And of course, also reaping the economic benefits of thousands of visitors.

January 20th? They're calling for as many as 10,000 buses along with those 4 million spectators. People in neighboring Virgina and Maryland who plan to work that day? They're being encouraged to walk to work, as the roads and subway systems will likely be at a standstill. And that's if it doesn't snow...                                           

That's one big event in Washington that the world will be turning its eyes to in January. There's another event also holding high anticipation, and while there won't be 4 million people physically in DC for this other event, virtually the numbers will be high from every corner of the globe.

                                            

Why? Here's what some are saying:

"souped-up speed"

"faster, better graphics"

"great improvement"

"superb"

"world-class"

"...you heard and responded"

"a big step up"

"easier to use"

"much better than the last version"

 "love the new interface, colors used and layout"

 "seems better put together and better thought out"

"looks more professional"

"I can trust it"

"the best defragger in existence"

Join the throngs in Washington, DC in 2009 -- in person or from your computer.

It's a Perfect 10. Coming soon.

                         

Related Posts:

• Are you smarter?
• Virtual awareness
• Analyze this
• Our best ever is coming
• Obama or McCain
• 2009 tech trends

Building a powerful PC for the daily $4 trillion foreign exchange market

   

The foreign exchange (or currency or forex or FX) market exists wherever one currency is traded for another. According to Wikipedia, it is the largest and most liquid financial market in the world, and includes trading between large banks, central banks, currency speculators, multinational corporations, governments, and other financial markets and institutions. The average daily trade in the global forex and related markets currently is almost (US) $4 trillion.

                                

There are many online communities that are associated with FOREX, and one of the largest is FX Fisherman. FX Fisherman helps people make money in the FOREX world, whether through trading systems, metatrader indicators, or other tools.

One of its fund managers and consultants (who goes by the name Black Knight in FX Fisherman), from Munich, Germany, recently contributed a post to the site in response to several requests to specs for building a high-powered PC for the FOREX environment.

                    

He goes into detail about his specs for a high-powered PC, including processors, video cards, software and more. And Black Knight points out:

"Trading software is notorious for fragmenting hard drives - this is due to the amount of raw data they pull down and then re-calculate every single second to plot your indicators. I recommend running a defrag on your system drive at least once a week, and on your data drive about once a month. The defrag software that comes with Windows is not enough - PerfectDisk from Raxco Software will do a far more thorough job."

High volume, power needed, money to be made.

Solution found.

      

 

Defrag your iPod (or other flash, USB, firewire devices)

A question we get asked a lot - how do I defrag my iPod or other flash drive or USB device?

By default, PerfectDisk 2008 does not display drives connected by USB, firewire or external connections. Even though these devices represent themselves as a fixed hard drive, they may not support defragmentation. Prior to defragmenting these dvices, you'll need to check with the device manufacturer and verify that defragmentation is supported on these devices.

If your device does support defragmentation, then you can enable USB support in PerfectDisk 2008 by going to the PerfectDisk settings tab, removable storage and select the option to allow optimization of USB and firewire connected drives and click ok.For Flash drives, check the option to allow defragmenting flash drives. The device will display once this option is enabled.

Defrag your tunes.

          

From BBC -- why typewriters (yes, in 2008) beat computers -- no fragmentation!

I had no idea! Lost in my world of computers, software, and BSODs, I didn't realize that people were not only still using typewriters, but buying them! As BBC reported last week, Japanese multinational Brother sold 12,000 electronic typewriters in the UK last year. Now that's not nearly as many that bought PCs, laptops and PerfectDisk, but it's a lot more than zero. You can read the article, Why typewriters beat computers," here.

     

As The Day of the Jackal author Frederick Forsyth notes in the article, "I have never had an accident where I have pressed a button and accidentally sent seven chapters into cyberspace, never to be seen again. And have you ever tried to hack into my typewriter? It is very secure."

The BBC article also notes that typewriter users are "unruffled by the threat of disk defragmentation errors," although, as one astute commenter from London points out, "not to be pedantic, but there is no such thing as disk defragmentation errors" (well, actually there can be if the disk defragmentation program has a bug).

Anyway, I'm just glad to see disk defragmentation getting some notice from BBC.

Even if PerfectDisk can't fix any typewriter problems.

                                            

New today -- PerfectDisk 2008 Command Center, PerfectDisk 2008 for VMware ESX Bundle, PerfectDisk 2008 in German and French

We're excited to be making several major announcements today:

• The PerfectDisk 2008 Command Center is now available for sites requiring a centralized management console. It includes a much-improved user interface, new reports, enhanced reports, improved performance, new deployment options, new installation options, and more. One thing has not changed - it is still offered for free, as we believe centralized management is something businesses should expect in the most robust enterprise defragmentation solution.

          

• PerfectDisk 2008 for VMware ESX Bundle, a turnkey solution that provides a simple yet robust performance optimization solution for sites running VMware ESX Server.

• German and French versions of PerfectDisk 2008 are now available. Click on FR (French) or DE (Germany) in the upper-right hand corner of the Raxco Software website to obtain information and the products in the respective languages.

              

Still more is coming in 2008 - stay tuned.

Disk Defragmentation in a Lotus Notes Environment

A lot of Lotus Notes users are also PerfectDisk users. And one of the biggest reasons these users tell us over and over is because of PerfectDisk's Space Restoration Technology -- total, single-pass free space consolidation.

      

The Lotus Notes replication function synchs client users' databases with the server database. This results in new information being written to the local disk drive, increasing the size of the Notes database. The Windows file system views the Notes database as a single file. As more data is downloaded due to replication, the file system needs to find more free space to accommodate the growth of the Notes database. If the file system can't find contiguous free space, it will place the new data wherever it can, with the result being a badly fragmented Notes database. Severe Notes fragmentation manifests itself in unacceptable Notes application launch times and slow overall system performance as the fragmentation worsens.

If the free space is consolidated, the file system can allocate large pieces of contiguous space to extend the Notes databases, thereby reducing the total number of fragments and minimizing the adverse impact on performance.

It happens all the time. There's the multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical firm (there's a very good change you use something from them; there's virtually no chance you don't know its name) that originally made the wrong choice. They followed the hype and ended up with a defragmenter that was not up to the task. Free space became so fragmented the defragmenter could no longer function. Then they really studied the issue, brought in PerfectDisk, and now have fast-running systems all the time.

You can read more details about disk defragmentation in a Lotus Notes environment and the pharmaceutical company in this white paper.

Notes without free space consolidation? Better take some aspirin.

      

Top 10 reasons to use PerfectDisk during the recession

It may not be officially declared by the ones that make such declarations, but with this week's cover stories entitled Recession and You, Bracing for The Slide and Waking up to the Recession, from Information Week, Computerworld and Business Week respectively, I'd say if we're not there yet in the U.S., we're close. Here at Raxco, we're actually on pace for another record-setting year, but we know times are getting tough. And just maybe, PerfectDisk 2008 is the answer to your recession woes.

                 

Here's a list of the Top 10 Reasons to use PerfectDisk During a Recession.

      

#10 Bitmap and Fragmeter provide good, clean, free entertainment

#9   Save time and resources with single-pass defrag rather than attempting to defrag over and over and over again with a multi-pass defragger

#8   Flexible scheduling options allow you to schedule a defrag run while you're out looking for a job

#7   Run all your Windows Home Server clients for a single low price, leaving more money for food and gas, rather than the alternative that charges you for every copy

#6   Take advantage of improved performance with MFT placement so you can track your declining investments more quickly

#5   Defragment and report on all your NTFS metadata so you can tell your friends using other defraggers that they didn't get what they paid for -- defragmentation of their entire drive

#4   Defragment the Hibernate file so you can feel confident you aren't ending up with more fragmentation when you're off your laptop and watching CNBC for the latest on the recession

#3   Use Selected Files Defrag to defragment just your resumes, which keep getting updated

#2   Total free space consolidation so you can delete those ancient free credit offers and still have a clean drive with plenty of contiguouse free space to store your new threatening bank notices

And the #1 reason for use PerfectDisk 2008 during the recession:

Large drives, patented optimization...every feature - no extra charges means NO RIPOFF!

          

Election year or not, The Sheriff is still in charge

On April 26, 2007, Donn Edwards, sheriff of The Great Defrag Shootout, posted Part I of his extensive and wildly popular review of defrag programs. Just like the Super Bowl in the United States, Donn has chosen to use Roman numerals to report his findings, and he's now over XXX -- and presumably not stopping. He's written about the well-known, the lesser-kown, and the obscure. He's come up with his winners -- in commercial and freeware categories. And he stays on top of the issue - hearing the advice and arguments of others, listening to constructive criticism, and reviewing updates of the latest and greatest from vendors and developers.

Which brings us to Donn's February 8, 2008 post and review of PerfectDisk 2008. A few points from the review:

• "I particularly appreciate the message that estimates the time it will take to complete the defrag."
• "The defrag algorithms have been tweaked for improved performance, to cater for massive drive sizes, as well as improved performance, particularly on laptop drives."
• "...the new StealthPatrol...is a much better option than the 'all the time' type of automatic defrag, because it is less likely to interfere with normal work."
• "I have no problem in recommending PerfectDisk 2008 to new users as the best commercial defrag program available."

As always, it's an honest review and Donn makes it known when he feels there are shortcomings.

Don't let the sheriff come knocking on your door -- read his review now.