The Great Defrag Shootout XVII: Raxco PerfectDisk 8.0.64

When I first started using Diskeeper Lite several years a go I wanted something that would work a bit better than Microsoft's built-in Windows Disk Defragmenter (WDD) and figured that if Microsoft had licensed their technology from Diskeeper (previous versions in DOS were from Norton Speed Disk) I might get an improved version from Diskeeper themselves. It was only after my drive got to less than 20% free disk space that I discovered the first major problem with Diskeeper, and eventually tried PerfectDisk.
It worked fine right out of the box, and I bought a copy of PD7, which I later upgraded to PD8. I can honestly recommend PerfectDisk to anyone who needs a simple defrag utility that just does its job as advertised without too much fuss. That's not to say it is "perfect": it isn't. It has some niggly quirks that I really wish the guys at Raxco would fix. But where it matters most, PD8 gets the job done, and it does it well, both on servers and workstations.
It has been difficult writing this review, because I can't give it a "first look", since I've been using the product for ages. I have put off the review several times, even though it passes almost every test I can throw at it. CNet gave it full marks too.
The first good point is that it installs without fuss, and the screen display is clear and useful. I quickly switched off the extra help on the right, because it explained concepts I already knew, but unlike most help screens, this one was actually quite useful, especially for first time users.
The second good point is that when you click "Analyse" it will examine your hard drive, building up a display of the files, and then calculate the best way of improving the file layout to speed up your drive. Sometimes this may mean a boot time defrag, other times it may recommend a free space defrag, depending on the status of your files. One of the PDF documents on the Raxco web site makes a big fuss about PD's free space defragmentation, and I must say I have found it helpful, especially when I am working with large files.
The third good point is that PD has a command line option, so you can create your own batch files for special defrag needs. If you don't like this idea you can also schedule defragmentation to happen during quiet times. On one of the servers the defrag runs at 1am, when no one is using the system. I scheduled a "Free Space" defrag and a "Smart Placement" defrag on alternate days, to ensure the best drive performance for this server.
The command line option doesn't allow you to change the "CPU Priority" so you can't have it set to "Normal" or "Idle" by default, and then change to "Turbo" when you are running the command line. I wrote to Raxco's technical support about this, but got no response.* I have yet to get any kind of technical response from them about anything. Writing to the sales people did get a reply, however. In the meantime I figured out that I could create small registry files with the required settings, and make the changes to the registry from the batch file.
One of the nice things about this program is that PD will monitor the disk usage and scale itself back if the drive is being used by another process or user. You have to enable this feature and it does mean that the defrag takes longer. I found that I could run the defrag and do less disk intensive tasks, like blogging or writing program code while the defrag is in progress. I don't do this normally, because I tend to do defragging when I don't need to use the PC. The defrag doesn't interfere with downloads in progress or eMule activity.
The only time I got PD to interfere with anything was when I set up the "screen saver" defrag option, and then tried to run a normal defrag. The normal defrag kept getting cancelled by the "screen saver" option, which is a bit weird. You have to suspend the "screen saver" schedule, run the manual defrag, and then enable it again. What a mission.
On the subject of annoyances, there are a few more: the screen display doesn't update correctly in the area where the defrag has yet to be completed. The display shows the file number instead of the file name on NTFS volumes, and PD insists on placing part of a large file in front of a reserved space, and the rest of it afterwards, ensuring that the file is fragmented. See top image and then the one directly above. If you believe all the Diskeeper marketing hype, then this is perfectly OK, but I just find it a tad annoying.
These screen shots display the way PD arranges the files using "Smart Placement", where it puts the boot time files at the start of the drive, then the really old files (i.e. program files), followed by files that haven't changed in the last 60 days, and then the most recent files. It's probably not the most sophisticated file placement algorithm, but it works pretty effectively anyway.
I don't know what kind of magic PD does with directories, but I noticed an immediate improvement in the time to took to list a long directory after running PD, even though I had already used WDD and JkDefrag on the drive after reinstalling Windows from scratch. Whether it reorganises the contents of the directories or just places them in a better position on the drive, I don't know. What I can say is that the "everything faster" slogan for PerfectDisk is more than just marketing.
I have complained in other posts about PD being "slow", and by that I mean that it is pretty thorough at analysing and reorganising the drive, and my impatience runs faster than the defrag. But defragmentation is a disk-intensive task by definition, and the more thorough the defrag, the more data has to be moved. Vopt8 is pretty snappy, but it doesn't try to move lots of data around; this means that the drive is never completely reorganised either.
Here is an example of the "Analyse" results of my hard drive. Notice how there is a listing of the metadata size and fragmentation, the MFT size, and the free space size. PD wasn't able to fix the problem I had with a large, fragmented MFT, and it was only the unique freature of Paragon Total Defrag that sorted it out. I must admit that the problem was unusual, and that PD has improved the placement and fixed the fragmentation of the MFT on other drives I have tested.
I have tested PD on nearly full drives, as well as encrypted drives (TrueCrypt). It processes large, fragmented, compressed files without choking, and it can fix up my music files even when free space is low. From a technical point I can't fault either the way the defragging is done, or how the files are placed. It doesn't fall apart like DK does when free space is low, and it generally gets things sorted out in a single pass. Judging by the comments on the CNet Downloads site, my experience of PerfectDisk is pretty typical.
The only feature that is missing (apart from the annoyances mentioned) is the ability to identify which blocks belong to a particular file. You can defrag an individual file, but you have to guess which file is fragmeneted, which is weird. If PD added the file lookup features of O&O Defrag, it would be a killer app.
It's a pity the biggest competition to PD is a company that over-hypes and over-charges for its products. I got an email from a "Corporate Account Manager" at Diskeeper who claimed that it "has the 97.5% of the market in US" and they have sold 25 million licenses. He was unable to state the source of these numbers, so I assume it's just the usual marketing BS. I guess they need something to cover up their technical limitations, particularly the need for at least 20% free disk space. They certainly had me fooled for a while, and the user reviews at CNet are most revealing.
My conclusion: if you are willing to pay $39.99 for a defrag program, PerfectDisk 8 is the most complete product you can find.

*Update: someone at Raxco read this comment and was horrified. They are busy revamping their entire support system, and seem determined not to let anything "slip through the cracks" in future. I will post a separate blog article on how to turn "Turbo" mode on or off, following the advice I received.
Update 17 July 2007: Some readers have complained about PD8 being a CPU hog. I have not experienced this often, and generally the PD services use very little resources. The only time PD uses a lot of CPU time is at the closing stage of the "Analyse" process, which is to be expected. Another occasion was during a "single file defrag" of a large compressed file with many segments, during which time PD8 took over all the processing of the machine and showed no progress bar or anything else to indicate it was busy, even though it was.

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The Great Defrag Shootout: Why Defrag at all?

There are a few interesting myths and misconceptions out there about PCs and defragmentation. The first myth is that NTFS drives don't need to be defragmented. The second is that "modern" operating systems don't need to be defragmented at all. The third is that simple defragmentation on its own keeps your PC working fast.
The last one is the easiest to deal with. Recently I converted my brother's old Pentium II machine running WindowsXP into a "backup server". The WDD defrag program had been run occasionally, and the drive was pretty full, so most files were not too seriously fragmented.
As you can see from the "before" picture, the green files are all defragmented, but not particularly well organised. This was partly because I had just uninstalled a whole load of games and other junk from what was at one time a family PC.
Then I set to work on the drive using JkDefrag, allowing it to do its standard default defrag. Here is the result:
Given the choice between the two drive layouts, which one do you think will work more efficiently? The answer is pretty obvious. It was easily demonstrated on the PC in question because of its low processing horsepower in the first place. By the time I had defragmented the drive, cleaned the registry with CCleaner, and then compressed it with NTREGOPT, the machine was starting to "run" instead of "walk".
Defragmentation isn't the only strategy to make a PC run faster, but it is one of the strategies that are useful. "Regular" defragmentation is better than "random" defragging, but how often is "regular"? It depends on your PC. If you are generating lots of files, or editing databases, a daily defrag may be required. If your files are pretty small, a monthly defrag is probably good enough.
My own rule of thumb: if the defrag takes longer than an hour you need to do it more often. If it takes less than 10 minutes, defrag less often. You don't want to waste a lot of time in order to save a little time. Do the defrag during a quiet period, such as when you're away from your desk for a meeting, or after hours. In that way you don't waste productive time.
The other myths take longer to explain, but every drive on the planet runs the risk of fragmented files. Consider the following scenario: I install a 10GB drive on a server, and connect 2 PCs to the server. User A saves a 4GB data file to the server. The next day user B saves a 3GB file. So the drive has 3GB free. Now user A modifies his data file so it grows to 4.1GB. Even if he deletes the old file before saving the new one, there are only 2 gaps of 3GB each on the drive, unless the server moved the files around, which it isn't likely to do. So the 4.1GB file will be fragmented. Now it's up to the server to sort out the fragmentation. Different operating systems will do this in different ways, but every OS has to have a solution, even Linux.

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Nedbank hits grieving mom with 90% interest charges

by Xolile Bhengu, The Times
When Doris Msibi, 55, borrowed R4 000 to pay for her daughter’s funeral, she didn’t realise she would be repaying a total of R11 509.55 — almost 90% interest.
But the loan was not from a loan shark. It was with one of South Africa’s top four banks — Nedbank.
Msibi borrowed R4 000, but she was immediately charged an additional R1 000 in “administration fees”, which meant she now has to pay R320.17 a month for three years.
Msibi said: “I only qualified for R1000 from work. My burial society had buried two of my relatives before, and were unwilling to pay for my daughter’s funeral.”
The grieving mother was approached at her place of work, Anglo Research, by a broker, who was only known to her as Sello, offering loan arrangements through Nedbank.
Though she specifically asked for her loan to be paid back over 24 months, she later discovered her loan agreement was for three years.
Msibi, who has worked as a cleaner for 20 years, earns a gross salary of R1 800 a month. After deductions for clothing accounts and furniture, the Doornkop resident is left with about R800 to take care of two grandchildren and her son.
With only Grade 5 education, Msibi struggled to understand the loan agreement she had signed and turned to colleague Elaine Kgosana for help.
Kgosana approached Nedbank’s Southdale branch and queried on Msibi’s behalf.
Kgosana said: “I was told she was a high-risk client and it was not unusual for people with her type of income to be charged such an astronomical interest rate, and that some people paid close to 90 percent interest.”
Msibi said she was willing to honour her loan payment but would like the interest to be lowered.
Nedbank personal loans strategic business communications manger Roshelle Pillay said: “We would like to confirm that ND Msibi took out a R4000 loan in September 2006, to be repaid over 36 months at an interest rate of 65.5percent.
“Under the Usury Act Exemption Notice and regulated by the Micro Finance Regulatory Council no maximum rates were set. The risk profile of the client influenced the rate at which the client repays the loan.”
But run a R4 000 three-year loan at 65.5 percent interest through a loan calculator, and the monthly repayments come to R256.14.
The R320.17 Msibi is being charged equates to a R5 000 three-year loan at 65.5 percent. Since she received R4 000, she is effectively being charged 89 percent interest.
Msbibi agreed to this loan in October, before the National Credit Act came into effect in June. Nedbank said the new legislation sets a limit of 40.9 percent on unsecured loans at the current prime rate of 13 percent.
Nedbank is part of the Old Mutual group.

Update 10-July-2007: After The Times ran the story, the bank shaved off R6,941.44 from the R11,509.55 Msibi would have had to pay at the end of her loan agreement. Now an anonymous donor, a 71-year-old woman from Cape Town, deposited a cheque for R4,568.11 into Msibi’s Nedbank account late last week after reading of her predicament in The Times.

The Times article in full | digg it | Good Samaritan pays off loan

Surface Computing in the future

The Gizmo Effect

Suddenly last week I started getting lots of responses to my "Great Defrag Shootout" series. Then my friend Ian, who subscribes to the "Gizmo" Support Alert Newsletter, send me a copy of issue number 146. All it said in the newsletter was:

1.4 The Great Defrag Shoot-out
One of the best comparative reviews of defragmentation utilities I've seen. I don't agree with all the author's comments but hey, everyone is entitled to their opinion.
http://donnedwards.openaccess.co.za/2007/04/great-defrag-shootout-part-1.html

The following traffic graph from Anatomu.com shows the effect quite clearly:
All I can say is, thanks for the mention, and I hope your readers found what they were looking for.

A Most Satisfying Way of Nuking Spam

I hate spam, be it unsolicited emails, SMS messages, or phone calls. I recently heard of another service in the arsenal against spam: SPAMfighter. They have a free service, and a paid one. The free service has limitations and it displays ads in your Outlook or Outlook Express program. Personally I think the idea sucks.
But the SPAMfighter add-in for Outlook works so well that I was willing to pay the R180 per year to get the "pro" version. It took some persistence to do so, as I had to fight with their online store, but I won in the end.
Why pay for another service when I've already got a paid spamcop.net email address? Simply because some mails slip through the spamcop.net filters, and the M-Web spam filters, and they drive me nuts. This service has been pretty good at identifying the critters that get through. I "store" all the spam in Outlook's "deleted items" folder, instead of the default "SpamFighter" folder.
How many mails slip through spamcop.net? About one or two a day; another 70 or so get caught by spamcop.net, and never make it to my mailbox in the first place. Why spammers even bother with spamcop.net addresses beats me, but then I guess they're just stupid, or greedy, or both.
When you download the SPAMfighter software you get a free 30 day license for the "pro" version. If you plan to buy the program, wait until day 31 before you buy: the 1 year license does not get added to the 30 day trial, but starts immediately, so I go suckered out of 3 weeks free service. If you use Outlook or Outlook Express and unsolicited emails drive you crazy, this service is just for you. If you find a message that gets through, just click on the "Block" button and that message is then sent to their mail servers and all other SPAMfighter users get their copies of the same message blocked. So it gets deleted from over 3 million other inboxes, of which 8028 are users in South Africa, where I live. The stats on their home page make for interesting reading, assuming they're true.
Some time ago I bought SpamEater Pro, which is also a great anti-spam program, but you have to run it before you do a send and receive, and that became a hassle when I got my spamcop.net account, because there were so few spam messages left. This method is simpler, and you get the satisfaction of automatically warning others which email messages are a nuisance.