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Diskeeper 2008 Professional Review

Disclaimer - the folks at Diskeeper gave me a free copy of Diskeeper 2008 Pro Premier. But, I've purchased previous versions of their product.

I've been using Diskeeper for a couple years now, and I've got to say, I love this product.  Back before Vista was released, I had purchased and installed it on my Win XP Pro machine, and compared to the Windows Defrag utility, well, there is no comparison.  Where Windows Defrag takes forever to run, Diskeeper was finished in no time.  When I put Vista on my laptop, it was going back to the defrag dark ages until I got the new Vista ready version of Diskeeper.  Since then, they came out with Diskeeper 2008, which just keeps improving on a great tool.

Diskeeper for Home/Home Office comes in 4 versions, Home, Pro, Pro Premier, and Home Server.  The Home Server edition is something that is going to be sorely needed, a version of a desktop utility that needs to run on a server, but not at the price of a server version.  The Home version is $29.95, and the Home Server version is $69.95, which is a very reasonable price.  When I was beta testing Home Server, one of the issues I had was the price of things like Antivirus and defrag utilities, because it is basically Windows Server, which most desktop OS utilities will not run, and the price of server versions are a lot more than what a hobbyist will want to spend.

I have a HP 8510p notebook with Vista Ultimate installed, and Diskeeper is one of the first programs I installed.  As a developer, I tend to install and uninstall lots of programs.  Combine that with Source Control and versioning, and my harddrive tends to fragment pretty quickly, so a tool like Diskeeper keeps my drives from getting fragmented and performing up to their potential.  The only issue I have with Diskeeper (and it isn't so much of an issue with Diskeeper) is that it doesn't integrate with my Security/Anti-virus Utility of choice, Windows Live OneCare.  OneCare likes to schedule "Tune Ups", which basically consist of running things like virus scans and defrag.  The problem is that OneCare doesn't have a way to let it know that I don't use the Windows Defrag tool, and use Diskeeper instead (OneCare has the same problem with Backup Utilities).  So, it during the tune up, it tries to run the Windows Defrag Utility, which is slow, and doesn't seem to like the way Diskeeper defrags.  I also am not a big fan of the amount of time OneCare takes to scan my disk for viruses, but that is a whole other post (but OneCare is still my favorite Vista Security/Antivirus Utility).  Other than that slight issue, I love Diskeeper.  If you are a developer, or just abuse your harddrive with lots of new/updated/deleted files, Diskeeper is a must.

Published Monday, March 03, 2008 10:26 AM by donxml
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Michael Teper said:

Don, do you let OneCare restart your PC on you automatically on update? That is the major beef I have with it -- either it gets to restart my machine and is happy or I stay in control of restarts and OneCare turns an ugly red.
March 4, 2008 1:12 PM

donxml said:

I'm running OneCare on Vista, and I very rarely have to restart on automatic update.  I'm in a beta program, so what I'm running may be a little ahead of what you are using, so my experience may be a little different.  But, I've also have a regular OneCare subscription for my other PCs, which are running XP and Vista, and I haven't seen the restart issue on them (but they are not my daily machines, the kids use those).

March 4, 2008 5:45 PM

Stratton said:

I have Diskeeper 2008 Pro (not the Pro Premier) installed on my Vista notebook (Lenovo), and I must say, it's leagues better than Vista's unpredictable defragmenter. In fact, I like it better than all the other defragmenters I tried out. DK Pro does a great job of keeping the drives defragmented without bothering me and I particularly like it's low resource usage. FYI, I use AVG free anti-virus and it doesn't give me any trouble with Diskeeper.
March 6, 2008 7:15 AM

Peter Laudati said:

Glad to see the review on this product. I loved Diskeeper on my XP machine, but wasn't sure how it would be on Vista. Sounds like I'll be safe now. I'll be downloading soon.
April 6, 2008 7:44 PM

Jeroen said:

Are there any system administrators who use diskeeper on their windows 2003 datacenters? And if so what do you think of dk? Jeroen
April 11, 2008 5:37 AM

Walt Steiner said:

My hard drive became fragmented so badly that the windows defrag did nothing. I remove up to 44% of the files and all the large ones too, and defragged in safe mode. Didn't help. So I download diskeeper trial ware. After about 3 or 4 defrags, my drive looks pretty good. I used diskeeper way back and did not like it because it would start defragging and slow me down in the middle of doing something and I would turn it off. We'll see if this is really invisible!
May 11, 2008 2:03 PM

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About donxml

I’m an independent consultant, specializing in .Net solutions architecture, based out of New Jersey who also doubles as an evangelist for XML, Domain Driven Design, enterprise architecture and .Net. I do not work for Microsoft, the W3C or any other big company that you may know of (at least not yet). I’ve been an indie for over ten years, and although I’ve been tempted a couple times to take a job with companies like Microsoft, I’ve haven’t found something better than my current situation. I work mostly with the large pharmaceuticals that are based here in New Jersey, and usually find myself on long term contracts. Definitely not the prototypical indie consultant, but it lets me dedicate time to my non-income generating activities like the developer community stuff, plus financing open source projects like XPathmania and MVP-XML. If you would like to talk to me about doing some contract work, just contact me via the contact page. My rates vary widely, depending on lots of different variables, but mostly distance from Jersey, and type of work. Plus, I’ve been known to donate some of my code for various projects.
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