Diskeeper rant + opinions wanted on defraggers

First of all, please allow me to state that I've been using Diskeeper Pro Premier for a few years and I actually like the product. From my experience, it does an overall decent job, is unobtrusive when running in the background, manual defrags are very quick, and I-FAAST works as advertised (or at least *appears* to do so).

However, I am absolutely and thoroughly disgusted with the activation scheme. I've done quite a few image restores (to the same and new HDDs using Shadow Protect) and Diskeeper is the **only** program I own that requires activation after restoring an image (all the other programs I use that require activation have never asked me to reactivate after a restore).

But NOW, after my latest restore and the (as per usual) Diskeeper activation routine, the program is bluntly informing me that I've basically 'activated too many times'. Thus, I own a 99 dollar software product that is currently useless; I can't even do a manual defrag as that option is greyed out.

Quite frankly, if I believed the product was, without question, the best in its class, I would go through the hassle of contacting support, explaining the situation, and waiting for a response. But after reading a number of posts on this board (and others), I no longer believe that Diskeeper Pro Premier is the best defragger on the market. Moreover, even if it were, to my way of thinking it would sort of need to be roughly *twice* as good as any competing product since, after all, it costs over *twice* as much.

I apologize for the lengthy rant but am seriously looking for advice from those who have used similar (commercial) products. I've read other topics on defraggers, including the links contained therein, and am leaning towards buying either PD2008 or Ultimate Defrag. I am, however, open to any and all suggestions provided the suggested products are full-featured, reliable, and reasonably priced (i.e., I really don't consider $250 for 3 Diskeeper Pro Premier licenses "reasonable" for this type of software).

Thanks for reading and any thoughts on the issue(s) raised herein!

 

I converted my systems from Diskeeper to Raxco PerfectDisk (PD) a couple of years ago. Executive Software was simply a bit too aggressive in the email department for my tastes and pricing wasn't that attractive.

PD Pro comes in a home user 3-pack for $70 - get the support and upgrade protection, it's cheap (about $15 - you select it on check out). These products are fairly similar, PD works and Raxco has good customer service.

Blue

 

Hello,
i have had very good experience with diskeeper support.
once i contacted them stating that the uk pricing was to expensive so they gave me a discount code to put it at the same as the US pricing so i can keep the uk support.
i would contact diskeeper if i was you. i sure you will get a good response in a few days.

i have tryed perfectdisk and after doing a defrag with jkdefrag and then done an analysis with perfectdisc it said my drives where in pretty much perfect condition. so didnt bother to buy it.

 

PD is excellent, so is DK but in overall terms PD does its job quite well. I have been using PD since version 5 and apart from few minor glitches in newer versions, they have been quite good. Their updates have been frequent when a issue comes up.

 

Currently I'm using Ultimate Defrag and it really increased my performance.
I don't know what to say about Diskeeper. The last time I used it, I don't know why, it made my harddisk full of errors, which I corrected with chkdsk, extremely slow and sometimes the computer decided to go crazy: text would disappear, I couldn't open any program and I had to restart to fix it. The problem faded out with time.

 

Hi Blue:

Yes, I trialed both products DK and PD about a year back.

Like the OP I also liked DK until I finally twigged on to the fact that it was running all the time. Saw no point to defragging continuosly so I purchased PD 2008.

It works fine and has some extra usefull features such as id'g all my duplicate photo files I had created while messing about with them.

The PD 2008 can be set to have it's agent running all the time hunting for updates to itself or turned off. I turned it off as I dislike these intrustive uncontrolled phone home features. But PD allows it to be turned off.

 

at this point i dont like having a service running all the time doing nothing.
yes you can disable the perfectdisk services but you will need to start them when you want to defrag.
my old pc has diskeeper on it and it works well.
but on my new pc i just run jkdefrag every so often.

 

Unless you're serious about defragging both diskeeper and ultimate defrag have free versions which i use and they both do a superb job for a freebie. That being said i do also have perfectdisk rx suite which i picked up for $9.99 and probably does the best job i've seen in a defragger.

 

I used to buy Diskeeper but then moved on to PD and recently Ultimate Defrag 2008. There is nothing special about the defrag part of UD but then there is nothing special about the defrag part of any of these programs. The thing which gives UD the edge is the ability to achive most of the unused files so that the defrag part of the program has less to do. Less to do means its works more quickly and having the most used files on the fastest part of the drive is said to make things faster.

Any program that has the potential to produce activation problems such as you have experienced would not be considered by me.

 

You can download a script from Raxco that will shut off the PD91Agent and PD91Engine Services when the defrag has finished. It's called RunPD.exe and you can get it here:
http://www.raxco.com/support/windows/pd90/tips.cfm
I use it for my occasional PerfectDisk manual defrags; I would never allow a defragger to run constantly.

I switched to PerfectDisk Pro after using Diskeeper for a few years. DK was getting way too bloated for use as a manual defragger. It had far too many options that I simply never used. PD is somewhat like that, but just not as bad. Besides, I like the the graphics better in PerfectDisk---reminds me of the old Win98/ME defragger.

 

Hye beer dog,
execellent find!
thanks
perfectdisk2008 GUI does look a bit to in yourface imo. i prefered the 7/8 version interface.

 

If you don't want a defrag program constantly running ( and I agree I don't) then isn't PD8 better than PD 2008 ? what extra "benefit" does 2008 have ?

 

Beats me. I'm new to PerfectDisk so I never used PD8; I just got the latest and greatest, which happened to be PD9. Would PD8 have served me better as an occasional manual defragger? Seems like everything out there is overkill for a utility that you only need to use once a month or less. Unfortunately, marketing wants plenty of bells 'n' whistles to hype their products. There's something to be said for the simplicity of the Windows defrag utility, but it's awfully slow.

 

I know Windows XP has a defragmentation program/service.

Is there a real advantadge in using a third-party defragmentation program ?

 

i didnt find any benefits to the 2008 version.
the duplicate file and temp files cleaner shouldnt of been included.
the GUI is horrible.
the new defrag modes are not needed.
stealth patrol to defrag when the computer is idle.
i thought the idea with perfectdisk is that you dont need to defrag constantly because it defrags free space so it takes longer to become fragmented. last year raxco said diskeeper's idea to defrag all the time using idle resourses was pointless and just wasted resourses.
i liked perfectdisk 7 and 8. a through online and offline defrag on schdule or on demand. worked great.
why couldnt raxco keep to the simple recipe and just make perfectdisk defrag faster and use less resoures?
they should do a coca cola sell perfectdisk 8 as perfectdisk classic and make tons more cash.

 

I don't buy into any of the marketing hype of any of the "paid" defraggers. If you listen to them, your system will come alive if you use their product. Sorry but I don't believe it.

That said, 3rd party defraggers may actually defragment a system better than the built-in one, but there is no guarantee. I use the free JkDefrag and like it but truthfully, I can't say with any level of certainty it really makes anything better either. (It seems to run faster than the built-in Windows version but not by a huge amount.)

IMO, you can try using something else and you may like it. But it probably makes little difference...

 

Having tried several defraggers over the years, I'm not at all convinced by the claims of the commercial defrggers. There are some good reviews to find if you look. Now I'm using JkDefrag with the JkDefragUI interface. It seems to make my system as responsive as any of the paid programs, & you can set your PC to turn off after a defrag so you can let it do it's job at the end of the day. Give it a try.

 

From Diskeeper, PerfectDisk, O&O, Auslogics, JKDefrag and UltimateDefrag, I noticed (great) performance improvement only with the last one.

 

Personally I just use the windows administrative services to set these 2 to manual. That way I don't have download script that messes with my OS.

Here they are:

PD91Agent set to manual
PD91Engine set to manual

Users should IMHO manage their own services and not turn that task over to a 3rd party vendor no matter how trustworthy they are.

 

That's very nice but it doesn't quite work---hence the need for the .bat file from Raxco.

If you set the 2 services to manual/stopped, they will restart after you run a PD defrag. If you use the .bat file (RunPD), then the 2 services will enter a manual/stopped state after the defrag. Try it and you'll see.

Not all scripts and .bat files are evil. RunPD is benign and performs a task that you can't accomplish simply by putting the PD91 services in manual.

From the readme for RunPD.bat:
"RunPD.bat - a .bat file that will start PD91Agent service, run PerfectDisk 2008 and when the PerfectDisk 2008 GUI is closed, stop PD91Agent and PD91Engine Services."

 

Tried them all and finally settled on UltimateDefrag by DiskTrix and standing currently at 2008.

I do keep another on hand (and on some of my units) which is proven reliable for this user's needs to in Vopt

Both of these don't need to run in the background so-to-speak like others do, and that's the difference which motivated my decision in them as opposed to other Super-DeFrags.

 

Well, I have been using O&O defrag for years. And never had any problems. You can even try the trial version and test it yourself.

 

I have been very happy with PerfectDisk 2008 under Vista Home Premium. I have tried nearly every option and ended up leaving it pretty much in default "Stealth" mode. No bad behaviors at all.

I can't claim it is the best, because I don't have experience with many of the others. It does work as advertized though.

 

Thought about buying UltimateDefrag but the options are confusing to me. I am running Vista and if I can just set a couple of options and let it go with good results I would love to do that. Could someone remind again of some basic options that have helped you? I know there have been some threads on this but maybe after some usage and trial and error, ytour options may be differnet now. Thanks again.

Gary

 

You don't really need to change the option, the Auto Defrag should do the job.