Tuesday, May 29, 2007
The Great Defrag Shootout XII: Power Defragmenter GUI 2.0.125
Labels:
Contig,
Defragmentation,
The Great Defrag Shootout,
Thumbs Up
How hot is your hard drive?
Labels:
Software,
Temperature
Monday, May 28, 2007
The Great Defrag Shootout XI: Windows Disk Defragmenter
Update 13 Nov 2007: WDD scored very well in some tests I have been running. The first results are quite encouraging: 32% faster than a fresh WinXP installation.
Labels:
Defragmentation,
The Great Defrag Shootout,
WDD
The Cost of Reinstalling Windows: Conclusion
Labels:
Software
Microsoft takes on the free world
Microsoft claims that free software like Linux, which runs a big chunk of corporate America, violates 235 of its patents. It wants royalties from distributors and users. Users like you, maybe. Fortune's Roger Parloff reports.
Friday, May 25, 2007
The Cost of Reinstalling Windows: Part III
8:05am: Begin copying files from Penny's laptop and the DVD backup disks.
9:00am: Download and install iTunes. In typical Apple fashion it crashed the first time, and I had to install it again. This time I disabled the automatic download software, which is brain dead.
9:43am: Discovered that the SQL Server 2000 patch file (44MB) was the wrong one. Begin downloading the 66.9MB correct one (SQL2000-KB884525-SP4-x86-ENU.EXE) instead.
10:30am: Autopage phones with more unsolicited marketing. Will they ever learn?
11:00am: Begin copying c:\dev directory from Penny's machine. This will take the rest of the day. Leave for appointment at Drive Report.
8.00pm: Arrive home after a meeting and site visit and find most of the files copied, but defrag needed to tidy up the mess.
Total downloads: 797.81MB, upload 24.91MB.
9:00pm: Milo and SQL Server 2000 SP4 installation.
10:00pm: Reboot. Used TweakUI to log in automatically and disable AutoRun on all drives.
10:42pm: Download SafeXP and PsShutdown.
11:00pm: More Milo, plus finally get to download my emails into Outlook. Set up Gmail and Spamcop accounts. More defrag work needed.
Labels:
Software
Thursday, May 24, 2007
The Cost of Reinstalling Windows: Part II
8:05am: coffee and Acer disks. Stepped through entire process. Quite cool
9:15am: First Windows boot.
9:30am: While checking on bundled applications, noticed entire drive was partitioned as single drive (C:). Damn! Reboot, run Fdisk to create C: and D:
10:30am: Bingo! First Windows boot. Go through Windows setup finalization.
10:50am: Uninstall Symantec bloatware.
11:00am: Convert drive to NTFS using convert c: /fs:ntfs command.
11:11am: Run Windows Update, select Microsoft Update.
11:45am: Reboot without downloading, in order to install Acrobat 7.08 update, NOD32.
12:10pm: NOD32 installed, Acrobat update installed.
12:11pm: Installed CCleaner, removed Symantec Shared files, Movie Maker, and Windows Messenger files. Cleaned up and ran Rootkit Revealer (without network cable plugged in). Nothing unusual to report.
12:57pm: return to Microsoft Update, selected just Internet Explorer 7 download. Hopefully this will save on some updates.
1:13pm: Windows Validation successful. Ignored other critical updates.
1:33pm: Begin downloading 75 critical Windows updates. I guess IE7 doesn't reduce the critical updates that much after all.
2:12pm: Windows Genuine Advantage notification installed.
2:45pm: Reboot after installing all 75 critical updates. So far total downloads come to 185.44MB. Began downloading NTI CD patches, Google Pack: Skype, Real Player, Google screensaver, Google Desktop.
4:01pm: Begin Sun Java 6.1 Runtime install, and FireFox 2 with Google Toolbar download.
5:20pm: Begin defrag using JkDefrag. Total downloads so far are 326MB.
5:44pm: Start installing Microsoft OfficeXP.
6:30pm: OfficeXP installed, and first round of service packs. Install media CD while additional service packs are downloading.
8:25pm: OfficeXP SP3 installed, now begin downloading another 20 critical updates. Download total now 577.5MB
9:15pm: Install SQL Server 2000 from OfficeXP Developer CDs.
10:05pm: Install Visual Basic 6 Professional and Service Pack 6
11:00pm: Start Office97 and ODE Tools Install
midnight: Total downloads: 592.75MB, 17.5MB upload.
Labels:
Software
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
The Cost of Reinstalling Windows: Part I
Update:
2:10pm: Boot up off Windows XP SR2 CD, delete C: partition.
2:15pm: Slow format of C: partition begins.
2:42pm: Windows installer reboots from C: drive for the first time.
2:50pm: Type in Product Key, other machine name details.
3:22pm: First desktop. Install NOD32 from flash drive, begin definitions update.
3:48pm: NOD32 scan stops on D: drive files. Damn! Infection still around somewhere, or a corrupted file perhaps. Take no chances: wipe the entire drive.
Insert DBAN CD and begin wiping entire hard drive. This will take a while (i.e. all night). So far the PC has downloaded 8.11MB, uploaded 392kb. What a way to spend a birthday.
Labels:
Software
Microsoft oPhone
Are these guys having a go at the iPhone by any chance?
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
One Blink and you're infected
Labels:
Software,
Thumbs Down
Monday, May 21, 2007
The Great Defrag Shootout X: Diskeeper 2007 Professional and Pro Premier
While I agree that a simple program like CCleaner will reduce the clutter on your PC, the reason why I needed a program other than WDD was to sort out the tangled mess my large files were getting themselves into that WDD wasn't able to sort out. I fail to see why I should keep 15-20% of my drive unused simply because my defrag program can't deal with my large files. That's what Diskeeper expects.
Getting More Free Space
If your volume is extremely full, there may not be sufficient free space to effectively defragment the files. In this case, here are several suggestions:You can temporarily move some of the files off the volume, particularly large files. This temporary measure often allows Diskeeper the "working room" it needs to complete the defragmentation process. Also, this allows Diskeeper to defragment the free space on the volume, increasing the possibility that the temporarily-moved files can be moved back to the volume in a contiguous (or at least less fragmented) condition.
There are often a number of temporary files stored on your computer, and deleting these files can help you gain more free space. [snip]
You can empty the Windows Recycle Bin on the volume in question. By default, when you delete files on most Windows systems the files are not really deleted—they are instead moved into the Recycle Bin, so they still take up disk space. Emptying the Recycle Bin does delete the files, thus creating more room for Diskeeper to do its work.
So on the one hand Diskeeper doesn't make any major effort to sort out the free disk space, and on the other hand it states that if there isn't enough free disk space it can't (or won't) defrag large files. This is a self-defeating approach, and when it hits you you'll wish you never paid good money for this program. Just uninstall it and buy a decent program to begin with.
Why doesn't Diskeeper completely consolidate the free space on my volume?
There are several factors that can prevent the free space on a disk volume from being defragmented:It is important to know that having all of the free space in a single, contiguous piece provides very little (if any) performance benefit. Free space fragmented into hundreds of pieces will impact disk performance, but free space that’s in a few pieces should not have any effect on the performance of your disk.
- A fragmented paging file.
- A large number of directories on the volume.
- On NTFS volumes, a portion of the free space on a volume is reserved by the operating system for the Master File Table (MFT).
I have not decided what to review next: DiskMD didn't make it out of the starting block, since you have to buy it before you find out whther it's any good. In the meantime, I suggest you try my combination of freeware defrag utilities. Download it here. It's certainly better than Diskeeper.
Update: Monday 28th May 2007: It seems that Diskeeper is one of the only programs actually able to defrag the Master File Table (MFT). Because I converted my FAT32 partition to NTFS before I had reinstalled everything, the MFT doubled in size while I installed all the Office files and other applications. After trying PerfectDisk 8, JkDefrag, and Windows Disk Defragmenter, Diskeeper did the trick. When I uninstalled it I didn't get the errors reported above. I have contacted Raxco to find out why PD wasn't able to defrag the MFT, when it claims to be able to so. I did not receive a reply.
Update: Friday 8th June 2007: It would appear that Paragon Total Defrag 2007 can not only defragment the MFT, but also reduce its size, something no other defrag program can do.
Update: Wednesday 24th October 2008: DK 2008 has been released, and I'll be testing it for the next few weeks to see if it really lives up to its claims. I'm not optimistic but I hope to be proved wrong. See First Impressions.
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