DefragExpress Launched

My respect for a very professional response to some difficult but fair questioning.

Appreciate what you say about Rob F and I think that the extension to 14 days will go a way to showing that he is serious about what his customers and potential customers are saying.

For my part I like interacting, with developers, and most importantly hopefully helping them improve their products where possible.

Hope that you decide to stay with us...you already feel like one of the happy brethern that we have at Wilders (IMHO THE best forum on the interweb!! )

 

PerfectDisk ftw.

I wont risk my data on some non mature defrag application.

 

Stay on topic, ftw.

 

and Yashua, use PerfectDisk...no one is asking/forcing you to use DefragExpress!

 

yashau, if course everybody is free to choose software to suit his/her needs. I'd just like to elaborate on data safety during defragmentation. Back in 90th Microsoft introduced a new feature in its Windows NT4 operating system, that was a basic set of file movement functions, called Defragmentation API. The purpose was to allow external defragmenters to use a safe way of moving files. Since then virtually all defragmenters started using this API. It is designed in a way that it's simply impossible to corrupt disk, no matter how you use it.

So you can safely try DefragExpress or any other defragger that uses defrag API - it means virtually all modern defraggers.

The only reason why your disk may fail is because excessive disk load that is caused by defragmentation; i.e if the disk is in bad condition it may fail if you expose it to high load. But this is a very rare case and is applicable to any program that makes use of HDD. You should monitor HDD health, particularly SMART data to avoid unexpected disk failure.

There is one special case that is - boot time defragmentation. Lot of defraggers use direct disk manipulation for boot time defrag. So you must be very careful about it and backup your drive before running boot time defragmentation.

 

Balders,

I appreciate your attitude and I really enjoy this forum! Certainly our discussions help me improve the product, and I'll try to dedicate time and address all issues that arise here.

 

Hi Isso

That's way cool.

I also enjoy Wilders for the helpful, friendly and mature (in the main) attitude of the members, plus the fact that there are some seriously knowledgable people who are prepared to share their knowledge selflessly, for the good of others who are not so knowledgeable but want to learn.

Let me know if there is any help that I can provide.

PS. Have PM'd you about getting those volume map screenshots that yo asked for.

 

I installed the 14 day trial today and have to say what a fantastic program this is. I have run it a few times trying various options and like the ease of use with the clean and effective interface.

Been using the free version of UD and liked that, but this seems to be much easier to use without all the hard to understand defrag options that UD has.

Thanks Isso... excellent development work you did on this.

 

Hm - isn't that contradictory to what is said on http://www.disktrix.com/ultimatedefrag_about_long.htm ?

 

Isso,

Yes I got my refund, thanks.-

>And finally Rob is the most honest person I've ever had a chance to work with >and I'm honored to >cooperate with him.



Look, a company that promises a “30 day no questions asked money back guarantee” and ignores its customers is not really honest is it.If Rob, God bless him, is indeed the most honest person you had the chance to work with one has wonder what kind of people you had to work with in the past.

Thanks again for your help Isso.I did appreciate it.

 

zarzenz - thank you! I'm glad you like the program.

tlu - no it is not contradictory, let me explain. Windows creates and updates layout.ini file that contains the files that are used often. This is very valuable information. But Windows does very bad job arranging files according to that list, and what I'm suggesting is to turn that feature off. Windows will continue to maintain and update layout.ini, but it will not move any files. Instead you can select the "Move frequently used files to high performance are" option in DE, or "Respect layout.ini" in UD - and you'll have that list prefectly arranged.
I hope this makes sence now.


Banshee - I'm glad you got the refund. As for Rob - I described my own experience working with him. I'm sorry you've had different experience.
I'm a freelancer and I had worked with a huge number of customers, and I was very frank calling Rob the most honest amongst them.

 

Yes, it does. Thanks!

 

Isso,

I have a strange situation here now... maybe you can help.

Before, when using UD V1.72 I would always see a fixed section marked up as reserved for MFT. But now, this has disappeared completely with no MFT files on my hard drive at all.

I don't know for sure if this happened after running DefragExpress or if it was some problem not related to this program.

I have checked HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem and do not have the NtfsMftZoneReservation entry in there at all.

I recently had my 40GB drive almost full but then deleted lots of files and it was after this I noticed a huge MFT when running UD. But then at some point yesterday after running DE I didn't notice the MFT had gone til now.

So... now I'm not sure how the huge MFT has suddenly gone completely with no DWORD listing for it in the registry.

After doing some searching about this it seems that the MFT can be put back in the registry by entering a new DWORD but am reluctant to start messing about too much at the moment as the computer is booting ok.

What can have happened to have made it disappear like this. Is it that after deleting lots of files and in which case why did I have a huge MFT shown in UD or has DE somehow removed all trace of my MFT.

Do I actually need a MFT if my computer runs ok.

Any help would be appreciated with this.

 

Hi Isso,
Could you tell me the update/upgrade/support policy for DefragExpress ?
Is it for 1-year or lifetime ?

 

zarzenz,

First let me say that lot of people confuse MFT with "MFT reserved zone". MFT (or master file table) is the most important system file on an NTFS partition. It contains the locations, names and other information about all files.

"MFT reserved zone" is in fact nothing more than just two numbers (start and end of the zone) that tell the system that it's better not to write anything into that area. This is done to prevent fragmentation of MFT.

MFT reserved zone can grow or shrink - it's normal - don't worry about it. Yes defragmentation could be the reason for it but again it's done by the system and you need not worry about anything.

Missing NtfsMftZoneReservation is normal - it does not present in default OS installation and you should add it only if you want to change the system behaviour on MFT reserved zone handling. I wouldn't recommend to add it unless you really know what you are doing.

Check out http://support.microsoft.com/kb/174619 for more information.

 

One simple question.

I have UD 2009. Does DE have different features or can we say that DE has a sub set of the UD features?

 

Isso,

Thanks for that.

I'm still unsure why I now have no reserved portion on my drive for the MFT unless you are saying this is normal behavior after deleting many files in which case this must be why it has shrunk now.

Guess it was just a coincidence that all my previous checks with UD showed the reserved MFT files in yellow which never got defragged and now I'm not seeing any at all after I deleted those huge files (mainly dvd files) and then the huge MFT that was there after those deletions must have shrunk to nothing even though I still have 14GB of my drive still being used.

Anyway... I'll leave alone for now and just see how it all goes.

 

vijayind,

I have no information about it, but I forwarded your question to Rob and I'll let you know the answer.

Nunes,

DE, although based on UD, has a new defragging algorithm that, being very fast, makes sure you have minimal refragmentation in time, thus makes subsequent defrags to take little time (and thus cause minimal disk wear). We came accross this algorithm during UD tests and it was so good that we decided to create a new product based on it.
This is why we delayed the UD 2009 release - hope you understand

 

OK vijayind, below is the answer regarding upgrade policy:

Upgrade policy is FREE for all 1.XX updates and then if we do a V2 then it will be at a discount – usually around 40 to 50%. But it will probably be a real long time till we do a V2 of DE so it is effectively lifetime

 

Thanks, Isso.
So DE license for 1.xx should last a long time, Thanks.

 

Hi all,

I have been waiting for DefragExpress to appear so when it was released, I tried it immediately. I did it on two XP machines and on a Vista machine.

It works quite well on all, except on the Vista system partition. Here, during phase 2, DE seems to pause forever. I have to stop the application, which stops after a while. When I relaunch it, it takes quite some time but it reaches phase 3 which is OK

Redefrag is quite quick as announced.

Lastly : on one PC, trial is 14 days, on the two others only 7. Strange ?

 

No, in fact, I believe it was Baldrick who asked them to extend past 7 and they graciously changed it to 14. So, if you installed from different downloads, the later one has the 14 day trial. Maybe deinstall and reinstall based on new version?

EDIT: mistook Baldrick for vijayind for some reason, corrected that

 

Yes, I think the 14 days trial comes with the latest download I made... Thanks.

There still the problem on Vista that's bothering me.

 

MerleOne,

Regarding the slow defrag on Vista - looks like you have System Restore (i.e. VSS) enabled and that is conflicting with defragmentation process. Read my posts #49 and #64 for more information. In short - once you have System Restore on Vista enabled, then defragmentation will be slow and the resulting layout won't be ideal. This is applicable to all defraggers - not only DE.

I'd recommend the following:

1. Select "Fast mode" when defragmenting, this mode has less interference with System restore.
2. If you are sure you don't need the current restore points, you can temporary turn System restore off, defragment the drive and then turn it back on.

Again - this is not a bug in DE, but a conflict between two Windows services - VSS and Defragmentation. It applies to all defragmenters.

 

Thanks. I think VSS is off on my Vista, because I am using Farstone Drive Clone Pro 6 which proposes a better recovery system. It's installed but not activated, so defragmentation should work without any problem. Besides, the cache file used by DCPro 6 are on another partition.

Anyway, I'll double-check.

Also, regarding the 14 days trial : on a system where the 7 day trials has been installed, the 7 days limit remains, even if the new version is installed over the former one, or even if De is uninstalled /reinstalled. Looks like the early adopters get less !