All Things PerfectDisk – and Defrag - x64 defrag

As more and more PCs come to market with x64 architecture, users need to be assured that the applications and software they use on their computers handle the 64-bit architecture corectly. That includes a top defrag utility. There are certain features of the x64 platform that need to be taken into account when designing and building a program for this environment. Microsoft provides a guide for the development, migration and porting to the 64-bit platform, and our development team has had the opportunity to meet directly with Microsoft on this issue. The result is that PerfectDisk’s operation in a 64-bit environement is completely transparent to the user and it runs flawlessly.

Here are some of the issues we’ve dealt with for PerfectDisk on x64 defrag:

The pointer size on 64 bit is 8 bytes; therefore all the code that contains pointer math needed to be reviewed and modified as necessary to avoid possible truncation.
Changes needed to be made with regards to registry reflection and redirection for WOW64 (Windows-on-Windows 64-bit).
There are very strict rules on digital signatures for kernel modules for Vista and Windows 7 x64 editions which had to be adhered to.
When compiling code under x32 platforms, compilers issue warnings for compatibility issues with x64. All this code and all of the warnings needed to be reviewed in order to ensure compelte transparency under x64.
Finally, our development team needed to clearly understand the differences between 64 bit and 32 bit in order to confirm that any other applications they worked with handled the differences properly. And since sometimes they did not, they would then need to work with other vendors to make sure things worked just right.

The result? As PerfectDisk user Brian Dohery told us: “I just switched to a new machine with the Vista 64-bit operating system on it. (Product name removed) was extremely buggy on the 64-bit architecture and PerfectDisk was not…ran like a dream and so I switched.” What the top defrag software should do.

For most people, switching to x64 is inevitable. That new computer you get is likely going to be 64 bit. It is very common now to have 4 BG of RAM or more, even on consumer desktop computers. Theoretically, the 32-bit architecture has a limit on the memory size it can address - and that limit is 4 GB. Given the fact that about 1 GB is reserved address space to be used by the motherboard, the maximum amount of RAM that a 32-bit XP or Vista system can use is even less, more like 3 GB.

No need to pinch yourself, it’s not a dream. We did the work, so PerfectDisk just works on x64.