Diskeeper 10.0

For the first time in more than 15 years, I finally admitted to myself that I needed a third-party disk optimizer rather than the disk defragmenting tool that ships with Windows. Diskeeper 10.0, the latest version of the venerable utility that's been around forever, was what convinced me.

Besides being impressively thorough, Diskeeper barely slowed me down as I performed a number of computer-intensive tasks while it ran. The major exception during testing for this column was when I activated my ZoneAlarm Security Suite after starting Diskeeper. (Diskeeper failed to install until I temporarily deactivated ZoneAlarm.) While Diskeeper graciously turns control over to other programs that request disk access, a good security suite checks every disk access. So the two utilities fought back and forth for several minutes.

Like Windows' built-in defragmenter, it's wise to give Diskeeper control of your computer during its initial disk analysis. But after that, unlike its Microsoft counterpart, Diskeeper keeps chugging along while you do productive work.

Diskeeper comes in a broad range of desktop and server editions. For desktop users, the $29.95 Home edition may be fine for casual family computers. The $49.95 Professional version reviewed here offers more powerful configuration options for SOHOs, commuters, and road warriors. The $99.95 Professional Premier edition offers still more power for those who demand it. Diskeeper Corp. offers trial versions of a variety of its products on its Web site to help you decide the best version for your needs.The trial versions also allow you to ensure that the sophisticated algorithms of Diskeeper actually work on your computer. For example, I first tried to test Diskeeper on a PC running Windows 98 SE, which the Diskeeper specs say is a supported OS. Installation was uneventful, but 98 went bump in the night each time I started the utility. So I installed the product on a Windows XP Pro SP2 machine for this column.

If you have experienced defragmenting problems on a computer that's very low on free disk space or that has very large files, you'll appreciate the latest version of Diskeeper. Based on data provided by the software's publisher, the number of remaining free-space fragments after running the latest version of its product is a miniscule fraction of those fragments compared to its previous version, which was none too shabby.

Diskeeper10.0's Smart Scheduling feature is also more proactive in dynamically adjusting automated defragmentation based on volume-level fragmentation. So the slight latency while the utility performs its background defragging is reduced even more.

In informal testing, Diskeeper didn't win any speed awards, but it didn't get in the way while it ran in the background, either — despite the torture testing that I threw at it. And its thoroughness rewarded me by morphing a sluggish computer that had needed defragmentation for too long into a peppy performer again. And the future looks bright: Because Diskeeper doesn't get in the way I won't be tempted to avoid disk optimization for so long.

J.W. Olsen has been a full-time IT author, columnist, editor, and freelance book project manager with more than 1000 editorial credits since 1990, and has provided computer, Web site, and editorial services to clients since 1985. He welcomes feedback via the response form at www.jwolsen.com.