Comments on: PerfectDisk 2008 Professional Worth a Try

By: Alisha

Alisha — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 13:42:58 +0000

Thank you for your comment. I also really like Diskeeper, but don’t like the idea of having to spend a lot more so I can run a deframenter on a 64-bit OS after I already purchased one version.

By: Greg/Raxco Support

Greg/Raxco Support — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 17:47:32 +0000

Regarding resource usage, PerfectDisk provides a lot of ways to defragment your system – Screen saver mode (only when screen saver is active), defined schedule (every Sunday at 8:00pm), StealthPatrol (when system is “idle”) or manual. Diskeeper provides 2 methods (manual and continously running in the background).

You can configure PerfectDisk to run at a idle CPU priority and to throttle disk I/O. That way, when PerfectDisk runs (screen saver, defined schedule, manual), it will use as little system resources as possible. With StealthPatrol, PerfectDisk detects if your system is “idle” and only defragments then – you’ll likely not even notice it is running.

Mentioned was the 2 PerfectDisk processes that run in the background (compared to the 1 Diskeeper process that runs in the background). For a description of these processes/services, please see http://www.raxco.com/Support/kb_detail.cfm?action=faq&prod=1&ver=2008#kb756. If you are ONLY running PerfectDisk manually (not screen saver, not StealthPatrol, not defined schedule) and don’t want PerfectDisk to automatically check for program updates, you can set the PDAgent service to manual instead of Automatic. However, just as Diskeeper uses a service/process that runs in the background to automatically defragment, if you want PerfectDisk to automatically defragment your computer (Screen Saver, StealthPatrol, defined schedule), the PDAgent service needs to remain running.

- Greg/Raxco Software
Microsoft MVP 2003-2007
Windows File Systems

Disclaimer: I work for Raxco Software, the maker of PerfectDisk – a commercial defrag utility, as a systems engineer in the support department.

By: RavenFlight

RavenFlight — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 11:08:08 +0000

That’s a nicely written review :)

A couple of months ago,I downloaded and checked out the evaluation versions of both these defragmenters on my XP Pro (SP3) machine that I use for gaming and photoediting (CS3, hundreds of 14mp raw files and 16-bit tiffs in each folder). I ended up getting Diskeeper 2008 finally because I liked the way it ran and the results it produced. Diskeeper was truly set and forget it, and it defragmented the drives quietly in the background without fuss..all automatically! Results were excellent- Bridge and ACR were fast, particularly thumbnail generation in Bridge. Despite the work it was doing, I never noticed DK running in the background, which is the way i liked it.

PD’s defrag was not bad at all, but i was not comfortable with its interface, speed and resource usage compared to DK, especially it’s need for 2 processes to run in the background. I guess it just boils down to personal preference regarding how you want a certain program to run and is expected of it in terms of results. Choice is always good :)