Know of any free disk optimization programs?

[waterinthefuel]

Other than defrag, which comes with Windows, do you know of any disk optimization programs that you can download that are free?<br /><br />Thanks!

 

[Holdimhook]

Re: Know of any free disk optimization programs?

Google PC Medic or PC Pitstop

 

[BoatBuoy]

Re: Know of any free disk optimization programs?

Is the Windows defrag giving you trouble?

 

[BRG25]

Re: Know of any free disk optimization programs?

Diskeeper

 

[Pogo123]

Re: Know of any free disk optimization programs?

All but a few merely look good, but use the native Windows to do the actual defrag. <br /><br />There are some that have a whole diffrent engine, but they are not free, so .. no, I don't

 

[waterinthefuel]

Re: Know of any free disk optimization programs?

Originally posted by BoatBuoy:<br /> Is the Windows defrag giving you trouble?

Not at all, I've just been told that programs like Norton's speeddisk (not free) do a better job of optimizing the performance of the drive.

 

[18rabbit]

Re: Know of any free disk optimization programs?

It is easy to get bit by the “better” bug. Before you decide you decide that you absolutely need better disk performance, consider what you use your computer for and how you use it. Improving performance may add up to a lot of nothing that matters. Someone at Cnet did some disk read/write analysis on the various hard drive technologies currently available, including disk access, read/write speeds. The difference between the worst disc drive and the best disk drive in an 8-hr production environment was a savings of between 11 and 15-seconds, total. That’s it. Folks paying 8-times as much for the best/fastest hard drive can expect at most a 15-seconds per day increase in productivity, BUT ONLY IF they are non-stop productive for those 8-hrs.<br /><br />Fwiw, my new computer came with Diskeeper lite installed in place of MS disk defrag. I hate diskeeper because it is an endless commercial. Every time I run it I get pop up windows soliciting me to purchase an upgraded version of diskeeper. MS’s basic defrag worked just fine for me on my other computers, would prefer it.<br /><br />Unless you are doing lots of daily hardcore number crunching, like Photoshop (pixel editing) or video editing, I doubt you will see an appreciable increase in system performance. Yes, there is prob some piece of paper somewhere that show you can make your system “better” with their pay-for-it disk management s/w. Managing auto-loading programs prob does as much as anything else for overall system speed. Not loading the ones you don’t need loaded frees up resources and increases system speed/performance.<br /><br />The other thing tha helps speed things up is to wipe your disk and reload all of your software at least every year. I don’t. I’m on a 3 to 4 year clock, but wow, what a diff it makes to reload everything.<br /><br />Probably some of the other computer heavy weights lurking around here can add to or correct these suggestions.<br /><br /><br />EDIT: I went to the MS website to see if I could snag a copy of the MS defragmenter because I don't like the Diskeeper lite. Here's what I found:<br /><br /> http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=227463 <br /><br />In a nutshell, the MS disk defragmenter IS THE SAME as Diskeeper lite.

 

[BoatBuoy]

Re: Know of any free disk optimization programs?

If you really want to know how your disk is doing and what programs are most disk-intensive, you can set up perfmon logging. Although not easy to use, it can tell you exactly what is going on with your disk, i.e. %Disk Write Time, %Disk Read Time, Avg. Disk Bytes/Read, Avg. Disk Bytes/Write, etc. More info than you'll ever want.<br /><br />EDIT: Example screen capture:<br />

 

[technostingray]

Re: Know of any free disk optimization programs?

FREE is a four letter word. (Ray Chrispens, 1998)

 

[Paul Moir]

Re: Know of any free disk optimization programs?

Even fragmentation isn't a serious problem until your hard drive is filled beyond about 80%. Before that the fragmentation level is fairly minor topping out and less than 10% of files (and usually a lot less). After that 80% mark it does go up very quickly though.<br /><br />What other FAT optimization methods exist other than defraging? In other words, why would you ever use a different program than one you had already?<br /><br />Boatbuoy's right: find out what's causing all the disc activity and fix the problem at it's root. If there's nothing to be done there, get a newer, faster hard drive. If you see a lot of paging requests, by more RAM.

 

[18rabbit]

Re: Know of any free disk optimization programs?

Originally posted by Paul Moir:<br /> If there's nothing to be done there, get a newer, faster hard drive.

Paul - see what I wrote above about "faster" HDDs. The folks at Cnet conducted some serious, real-life testing of HDD using common s/w applications (Word, Excel, Photoshop, etc) and concluded the faster HDD’s value was in constant read/write applications only, but a waste of money for almost everyone else.

 

[Paul Moir]

Re: Know of any free disk optimization programs?

Oh, I'm not denying that there's very little difference between any brands of new cheap IDE hard drives. It's just some people end up stuck with old slow hard drive. I've seen a few computers that have been "upgraded" running their old hard drives. The most laughable was an office that was running 5-7 year old drives in somewhat modern computers, all of which were well past their lifespan. These things had about 5MB/s true transfer rates. They didn't know any better and went with a low bid.<br />Yes, you would want to compare the HD you had now with the performance of a new one before you spent money.<br />Besides, it has zip to do with productivity and everything to do with annoyance on a home computer.<br /><br />When shopping for a hard drive, I look at reliability trends, warranty, noise, and finally speed.