It is important to periodically clean up your disk drive by defragmenting the files. What this action does is organize the files of your computer so that the data is sequentially stored on the disk and can load faster. Studies have shown that frequent defragmentation can speed up performance as much as buying a new fast disk drive.

The recent versions of Windows have included some type of defragment utility (other than Windows NT 4.0), but they tend to be slower and less effective than the standalone utilities. For Windows 95 and 98 users there are lots of options (with Norton Utilities being the most popular). For Windows NT users, there were no options for a long time. This is because of the different file system used by NT (and Windows 2000).

As of this writing, Diskeeper 6.0 is the only disk defragmenter to be fully certified by Microsoft for Windows 2000. I am sure that the others are working on upgrading their programs, but for now, I would suggest Diskeeper as the only solution for you Windows 2000 users.

I installed Diskeeper on my system back in December and ran it periodically since then, but not on a regular basis. I was shocked to find how badly fragmented my drive was until I decided to use Diskeeper on my C drive to create screen shots for this article. My system had been sluggish lately, so it seemed like a good choice. It turned out that it really needed to de defragged.

Diskeeper told me that it found 1194 fragmented files and 27011 excess file fragments. It sounds bad, and if you look at Figure 1, it looks bad. It also informed me that there was only 2% of the total volume size left and that I should have at least 20% for Windows to behave well. Diskeeper called this somewhat fragmented and said cleanup was important for performance improvement.

Figure 1 – A messy drive

I went on a cleanup binge and freed up a lot of space. I eliminated some programs I did not use any longer, moving some files to a different drive and some to a CD-R. This was a big improvement, giving me 25% free space. I was down to 285 fragmented files and 5318 excess file fragments. This was identified as moderately fragmented. As Figure 2 shows, it still looked ugly.

Figure 2 – Cleaned up a little

After a few minutes, it looked a lot better, as shown in Figure 3. But I still had fragmented files (shown in red). I knew from past experience that these files could not be defragmented because they were in use while the defragging was being done. I needed to defrag the disk without Windows running to clean up those files. Fortunately, Diskeeper has that capability (boot time defragmentation).

National Software Testing Labs, Inc., (NSTL) found that Diskeeper runs 300%–500% faster than the program included with Windows 2000. This lets you run it periodically, without taking too much of your time. They also found that the system performance can be increased by 56% to 81%.

Figure 3 – A fast defragmentation

I selected the boot time defragmentation option from the action menu. This gave me several options:

• I selected to do directory consolidation, which puts the directories together on the hard drive. Since I had directories scattered all over the drive (shown in cyan in the illustrations), I thought this would be good to do.
• I also selected to run CHKDSK before running the defragmentation. This would correct any broken files or problems with the media. This is always a good idea.
• I selected Reduce Paging File fragments. Looking at the help file told me that this function could only be done at boot time. Since it would also improve performance, it seemed like a good idea.
• The same rationale was used to select defragmenting the Master File Table. I wanted performance so I selected it.
• I did not select the pause option and I also did not request a log file.

Figure 4 – A clean drive

The end result is that my computer is now not as sluggish. I think I should review the programs I have loaded so that I can free up a little more space (I try out lots of software for review purposes). My other alternative is to change my partition sizes to give me more space on C.

I have learned from writing this review. I have not yet used the "set and forget" option to let the program automatically run. I intend to set it for a weekly run on both partitions. This should keep my system optimized.

Diskeeper will run on Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows ME, as will as Windows NT and Windows 2000. If you are running the server version of Windows NT or Windows 200, you need the more expensive server version. There are lots of different prices based upon the number of computers you want to license to run the software. Check the web page for pricing on multiple licenses.

I like the program and recommend it. Want to try it out for yourself? You can download a 30-day trial version and test the program out for yourself.

Diskeeper 6.0 Workstation
[$75 list, $50 street]
Note: works on Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, and 2000
Diskeeper 6.0 Server
[$399 list, $259 street]
Note: requires Windows NT 4.0 or Windows 2000
Executive Software
701 N. Brand Blvd., 6th Floor
Glendale, CA. 91203
818-547-2050
800-829-6468