PerfectDisk 8 Coming Soon (Info)

This page seems to explain a little about what I-FAAST is.

 

how would PerfectDisk's smartplacement compare to I-FAAST, since one goes by modification date and the other by access date?

 

Oooops, ya got me there, WSFuser! You gently brought to my attention that I spoke to loosely when I used the term "accessed" while attempting to explain PerfectDisk SmartPlacement -- it uses MODIFICATION date. [edited my prior post to correct that!]

All I can get from the I-FAAST page TonyW linked us to is that Diskeeper collects data on drive performance and file access patterns and uses that data to "accelerate" access. It doesn't explain, as far as I can tell, specifically HOW is accomplishes that. Maybe there is documentation somewhere else at their website that explains this more fully. However, I just don't have much desire to go scour up that info right now. Perhaps someone else can work up some energy over it?

 

THat's not really different than what Perfect disk does, but Diskeeper has this stupid background defragmentation which imposes needless overhead, especially compared with the benefits.

A proper defragmentation, does not require background defragmentation, rather all one has to do, depending on use, is run a defrag very so often.

I go for mobths at a time without running a defrag with Perfect Disk.

I'll be getting version 8 soon, so I do a defrag again.
Last defragged on 15 Aug 2006, but only because I moved lots of files to different drives.

 

Smart placement is designed to help reduce future fragmentation, by placing recently modified files at the end of the block of files.

The ONLY issue I have with this placement strategy is that I think perfect disc defrags these recently modified files, which is fine, but then packs them together, just for them to get move about as they are modified.

I-Fasst places files for maximum performance by working out what are the fastest parts of your disc and placing the most (recently I think) accessed files as close the those areas.
Even my 1 yr old DiamondMax 80gig would give a max of 7% gain (and I doubt they meant across the entire disc, only at the fastest parts), total waste of defrag effort.

Diskeepers background defrag is really useful. There is very little overhead, as it does an excellent job of defragging between file access.

I find diskeeper runs once or twice a day for me, but litterally only runs for a few mins a time.

Perfect disc 8 also includes the ability to do background defragging to a max of once a day, default is every 3 days according to the screenshots ive seen.

I personally like diskeepers default strategy which is defrag files, and gradually pack them closer and closer together (eg it takes multi passes to defrag space).

I ran an unscientific test of not just looking at defragging one off , which would be similar to Howard's useage pattern.
And of course the one off defrag perfect disc was better than diskeeper.
Even after 2 runs perfect disc was better.
Infact diskeeper seemed to never defrag perfectly.

What I did next was monitor the amount of fragmentation after a few days use and found that they have both refragmented to a similar level.

I found that running perfect disc daily for one week, that it took a lot longer (twice as long at best) than diskeeper.

IMHO perfect disc will suit those who defrag less often (eg weekly, monthly) and diskeeper those who are regular defraggers (daily), end of the day they both do good enough jobs at prevent fragmentation which you will notice (which is rare anyhow).

 

A thoughtful and balanced post, nickr. Makes sense to me.

 

PD allows you to schedule a defrag, that's very different that background defragmentation.

It makes no sense to run PD, or most any defragger, every day.

If you read the papers at the PD web site, you will notice that the FIRST run of PD will ordinarily take longer than the first run of other defraggers, but the results are usually better even after only one run, and usually require less frequent follow up runs.

The overhead of background defragmentation is not trivial, and yields little/no benefit compared with defragging at sensible intervals.

 

Diskeepers background mode, is only scheduled (changes frequency on fragmentation), not a continous process.

 

Good, but allowing more than once per day just enourages folkes to do the wrong thing.

 

I too have found while using PD that there's been long gaps between needing to do a defrag. I tend to run the program once a month, but it invariably often makes no recommendations. More often than not it tends to be an offline defrag when it does.

 

Using PD8 on both XP32 and core2duo XP64, runs great as usual.

 

available now!

 

Bought it!

I like to have the latest and greatest...

 

I have been using PerfectDisk v8 and one thing I like is that you can set the variable for rarely modified/ frequently modified in terms of days.

I have the latest version of DK and PD. I just started using PD today. I will see if I notice any program startup diferences in the next few days.

 

I would like to know how that test comes out. I currently use diskeeper 10.

i was reading about how perfectdisk only needs 5percent free space to defrag where as diskeeper needs 20percent which i do find anoying when defragging my backup drive. but odvisaly i own diskeeper 10 and would cost me money to switch. but the test does interest me.