Diskeeper Home Edition is a Godsend
By MIKE BERMAN
Scripps Howard News Service
August 06, 2003

Home computer users: Ever feel that you're being deliberately ignored by software manufacturers that seem to make everything for servers and workstations and nothing for you?

Well, times are changing!

The folks at Executive Software, who have always geared their products toward the workstation and server markets, have developed Diskeeper Home Edition ($37.50) for the rest of us who wouldn't know the difference between an Ethernet cable and a bus ticket.

Diskeeper began its existence as a powerful hard disk defragmenter geared only to computer systems running Windows NT. Then, as the industry changed, Executive Software made the move to Windows 2000 and Windows XP systems, but still only producing products aimed at networks, although single users could use Diskeeper Workstation on their PCs.

The drawback here was that they would be paying for features they didn't need.

Diskeeper Home Edition is just as powerful as its predecessors, but lacks the network defragmenting ability. In fact, I found it to be a lot faster than the older Workstation edition.

Other features include:

• It can be set to run "invisibly" in the background.
• Smart Scheduling constantly monitors disk performance and customizes defragmentation.
• It defragments critical system files every time you boot up your computer.
• It increases speed up to 200 percent.

So, now that you know what it does, let's deal with why you need it.

We've all gone through those tough times when, all of a sudden, it takes programs what seems like an eternity to load. This occurs because files become fragmented, with the computer putting bits and pieces of these files wherever there's room. This, of course, bogs down the system, as the computer looks for parts of the file in several places on your hard drive.

By defragmenting the drive, we're seeking out all of these pieces and putting them back together.

According to the Executive Software Web site, defragmentation often occurs when:

• You're surfing the Web. Web page graphics get saved temporarily on your hard drive producing a large number of files and increasing the possibility of fragmentation.
• You install games. Games depend on a tremendous number of files to operate.
• You get email. Every e-mail message takes up space on your hard drive causing fragmentation.

The more files you install on your hard drive, the more fragmentation occurs.

In the good old days, I would defragment my hard drive whenever my system would slow to a crawl. But now, with Diskeeper running in the background, everything is done without any input from me.

For more information on Diskeeper and other Executive Software products, go to www.execsoft.com.

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