Disk Defragmentation

Sometimes it's fun to take a step back from all the file system, slow PC tips, and Hyper-V performance counters talk and see how the best defrag software tool plays out in the real world. On its own, a server defrag may seem a little drab. But if you see how it's helping a baseball team, well...that can make it a little more interesting.

                                                    

The Greater Des Moines Baseball Company is the umbrella company for the Iowa Cubs minor league baseball team of the Pacific Coast League. Recently, the Cubs selected PerfectDisk 11 Server to boost its servers’ performance through disk defragmentation. The Cubs, with several hundred employees serving an annual attendance of over 500,000, use its servers for ticketing, merchandise sales, food and beverage sales, video boards and score boards, video production, financial and back office functions, and database management. The team's servers have several physical and virtual servers on Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 to run the business. Prior to selecting PerfectDisk over a competitive product, the Cubs used the Windows built-in disk defrag utility, but it was not up to the task. “Microsoft’s built-in defragmenter did not really accomplish much in terms of improved performance for our server, plus it was very slow,” said Larry Schunk, Chief Technology Officer at Greater Des Moines Baseball. “With PerfectDisk, our servers are running faster than ever, which means all our employees are more productive; in addition, its automation and powerful reporting tools provide a great value.”
                                        

You can see the complete press release of the Cubs server defrag selection here. 

Play ball. Win. Give your servers a good server defrag with the best defrag software.

The Cubs are in first place. Coincidence? That's crazy talk.

When trying to figure out how to make your PC run faster, many people turn to look for the best defrag tool and best PC optimizer. Look at reviews, head to the user forums, ask their colleagues and friends to see what the options are. Free or paid for. Automatic or manual. Lots of options or few. Enterprise defrag or for personal use only. It's all well and good, and what drives us here at Raxco to deliver the market's best defrag software year after year.

                                               

But we also like to differentiate ourselves in a different way, through our technical support and customer service. So while we truly believe PerfectDisk is the best defrag software available, we also think our service and support are superior as well. That attitude is epitomized by Wendy Clontz, who heads up our customer service department and whom we are proud to have with us.

Dan Baldry is a 20--year IT professional in Sydney, Australia, managing a team of people who sell maintenance and professional services for one of the world's largest networking companies. Dan wrote to me directly recently about what he described as our "excellent service," which he argues is hard to find these days. Here are some of Dan's words: 

                                                

"I purchased Perfect Disk a few years ago mainly on the basis of an article I came across in a local PC magazine that I thought gave a good impartial review and sold me on the merits of the product. With a computing background, to me disk defragmentation is what I would describe as a routine housekeeping item that I would consider baseline for a healthy PC. In a perfect world this would be delivered as a native part of the operating system. You might argue that it is, but I'm suspicious of the standard utility  and a bit wary of the available freeware (though I know they are reasonably good). With my hard disk capacity getting bigger, I was on the hunt for a good utility that would just do the job and I could be confident in (no doubts), so that was why I decided to stump up the dollars and go for Perfect Disk. In short, I wanted to be sure my system was at optimum health and running with maximum performance all the time. You might ask why? Well, I use my PC  for a mix of work and play and it became a bit of a mission to drive the best performance without resorting to a massive/expensive upgrade as time went on. A few dollars on PD seemed like a good option. Eventually I did upgrade but I still use PD as part of the same housekeeping approach.

However, over the past couple of years, with reinstalls, losing keys, lost downloads etc... and needing to call on support more than once came to realise that the Raxco company offered me an extension of the confidence that I had in the product, and that was the confidence that if I had an issue I would get a reasonably quick, no nonsense, response. Even though it was probably only a few interactions over something like 24 months, I realised it was the same people assisting me throughout, which made me feel the company must have something going for it to be able to retain people like that. The consistent message I hear back is that while customers choose our physical products to drive their business based on value and the vision of our company, it's the Services we offer that keeps them coming back. Not only that, but our partners value our Services above all for the profitable revenue it drives - and customers are willing to pay as they have confidence that they are getting a total package. I think it's how we treat our customers after the sale that creates real business, and I think that's something Raxco has understood from the get go."

The PerfectDisk 11 Client and Enterprise Console have been updated to Build 178. These latest builds include various bug fixes and minor enhancements.

You can “Check For Updates” in the products or wait for Autoupdate.

Client enhancements and fixes: 

• We corrected a bug when creating Auto Pilot schedules for Exchange Data stores on Exchange 2010. If individual stores were selected instead of all stores, you would get an error.
• A new feature was added to allow controlling the behavior (display) of the registration dialog. This can now be blocked using group policy, the config.ini file or the Enterprise Console
• A new feature was added to control the VSS settings from Group Policy or the config.ini file.
• A new feature was added to control the custom SMARTPlacement settings from Group Policy.
• We modified the behavior of the Screen Saver Auto-Pilot schedule to allow the monitor to power off. Prior to this version, Screen Saver schedules would not run if the monitor powered off as not screen saver was present. This behavior was modified to recognize the corporate need to have monitor power down to save energy.
• The defragmentation logic was modified to minimize skipping files during a defragmentation pass. Prior to this version a file could be skipping after failing to move when requested. This logic was changed to only skip the file under more restrictive terms.
• We corrected a flaw in the SmartDefrag logic where the proper defragmentation algorithm was not always being used.
• We added support for Japanese translations.

• When deploying patch files from the Enterprise console, the wizard would sometimes crash due to an un-initialized variable. This has been fixed.
• We corrected a bug when downloading the latest PerfectDisk clients for deployment. The console did not use the proxy settings. This has been fixed.
• New feature was added to allow controlling the behavior (display) of the registration dialog. This can now be blocked using group policy, the config.ini file or the Enterprise Console.
• We corrected a bug when downloading PerfectDisk client packages from the deployment wizard. Previous versions did not support saving the package to a network share. This has been fixed.
• A change was made to the deployment wizard to use the computer name if a domain is not specified when providing credentials.
• Some user interface layout changes were made to avoid confusion.
• We fixed a bug when specified specific sync periods which spanned midnight.
• We added support for Japanese translations.

 

• Reduce VMware overhead by reducing the total number of IO that traverse the virtual storage stack
   
• Improve system throughput by producing larger IO
   
• Reduce system latency by reducing total IO and generating larger IO
   
• Improve virtualization performance by increasing sequential IO
   
• Reduce the demand for host CPU, memory and IO resources
   
• Potentially create a situation where the host can support one or more additional guests due to the resources conserved

                                          

Redmond Magazine recently reported a problem with Windows 7 and video performance, where the VC-1 video codec does not use all of the cores in three-core and six-core machines. What does this mean? Well, if you've purchased a new computer with Windows 7 for better graphics and video support, you may not be getting all you signed up for. For example, Blu-ray disc players aren't leveraging the power of some multicore machines running Windows 7.

The issue may also affect Xbox 360 game consoles, which also use VC-1, as well as a few other video codecs. Codecs compress and decompress media files. Most computer users probably don't care about them, as long as the video frames run smoothly. But many do.

As Redmond reports, there's no word from Microsoft on when the problem with the VC-1 video codec in Windows 7 will be resolved.                                           

In the meantime (and afterward), thousands of videographers, graphic designers and the like turn to thorough disk defragmentation to boost their video performance. Particularly when you're doing lots of editing, with large files changing and being deleted, video performance can take a big hit. That's why so many of them turn to defragmentation utilities like PerfectDisk to keep video performance humming along.

Fast defrag. Faster defrag performance. All leading to better video performance.

This is the concluding post on whether there a need for an SSD defrag, from Greg Hayes' recent white paper.

                                                    

To maintain SSD write performance, SSD manufactures implement one or more of the following techniques:

Wear Leveling
The SSD controller keeps track of how many erase cycles have been performed on each flash block and dynamically remaps logical to physical blocks to spread out the wear over all the cells in the drive. This means that no one portion wears out faster than another - prolonging the life of the SSD.

Over Provisioning
Over Provisioning provides extra memory capacity (which the user can't access).  The SSD controller uses these "extra" cells to more easily create pre-erased blocks - ready to be used in the virtual pool.

TRIM
TRIM allows the SSD controller to remove data from deleted cells so that the next write won't have to move, erase then write.  This allows an SSD to maintain write performance for a longer period of time.  In order for TRIM to be effective, it has to be implemented in the SSD itself as well as in the Windows operating system. Currently, TRIM is only implemented in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

PerfectDisk and Benefits to SSD storage
With SSD storage, since file level fragmentation results in negligible performance degradation, traditional file-based defragmentation really doesn't provide any performance benefit and should be avoided, as it has the potential to ultimately degrade SSD write performance. What can provide a performance benefit is free space consolidation to eliminate free space fragmentation and consolidate partially full blocks of data. High free space fragmentation is a strong indicator that a high instance of un-TRIM'ed, or partially full blocks exists. 

While free space consolidation can help improve write performance, free space consolidation is not something that typically needs to be done on a frequent basis. PerfectDisk 11 will automatically identify SSD storage and if configured to optimize performance, will perform a Consolidate Free Space pass on the drive. PerfectDisk does not perform this pass automatically.  You must specifically tell PerfectDisk to optimize the drive. PerfectDisk allows you to perform this pass manually or on a scheduled basis. In addition, you can configure PerfectDisk to only optimize the SSD storage if free space fragmentation exceeds a specified threshold.

You can read the entire white paper here.

                                       

Related Post:

SSD overview and do I need an SSD defrag -- Part 1
 

                                     

It's not often that PerfectDisk and disk defragmentation software get into an article on a hot topic like Google Voice in publications like Network World and ComputerWorld. But yesterday was such a day. Okay, you have to read the entire article and it's not the focus of the article, but hey, I'll take it (and for a ComputerWorld, Network World, PC World article all about PerfectDisk, see this).

                                              

Mark Gibbs, writing in Network World in an article picked up by ComputerWorld and others, penned Google Voice turned loose and finding duplicated files in an article stating that Google Voice is now available to the public. And not being a Google Voice user right now, I will be soon. After reading Gibbs article, there seem to be many reasons to follow his advice -- "...you should really check it out...."

Besides giving a brief overview of Google Voice, Gibbs turns his focus to duplicate file removal and duplicate file software. It's a key part of a cleaning and streamlining effort he undertakes, writing:

"...what could need cleaning out? The answer: Duplicate files.

On my storage systems I have literally hundreds of projects along with various resources that simply exist for our entertainment (such as iTunes) that I know contain in many cases many duplicate copies of files.

So, in an attempt to streamline my stuff, I decided to try out three de-duplication products..."

I agree wholeheartedly with Mark that duplicate file removal is important and a great way to clean your PC. What Mark didn't mention was that PerfectDisk includes a duplicate file manager for duplicate file removal. However, he does mention that PerfecDisk is handling his disk defragmentation needs on his servers and PCs.

So check out Google Voice, whether or not you need duplicate file software or a defrag utility. And check out Mark Gibbs article in Network World and ComputerWorld here. Mark knows his stuff - he's done just about everything in the networking business, from serving as an executive in various companies to creating companies; and as an author he has written four books and numerous articles about networking and computer technology.

Apparently, he can't be dupped.

                                        
 

                                                         

As another weekend approaches, so does that time when many Exchange administrators think about the need to defrag Exchange database, and if they're smart, some good Exchange defrag software.

Now, Exchange performs, on its own, some basic defragmentation. But here I'm referring to Exchange offline defragmentation. Offline defragmentation and subsequent compaction of your Exchange Server data stores allow the operating system to reclaim disk space occupied by deleted data. How does this happen?

As users delete e-mails, the Exchange Server software frees up the space within the data stores where those e-mails reside, but never returns actual on-disk storage space to the operating system. The resulting data store never shrinks in size, whereas smaller data stores equate with expedient backups and more efficient disk utilization. If an Exchange data store starts to consume increasingly large quantities of disk space, the only way to reclaim those resources is to perform an offline defragmentation and compaction pass.

Now, an Exchange administrator can do this via the ESEUTIL utility, but it's a cumbersome and time-consuming task. There's a lot of manual commands and entering of data that is prone to user error. Which is why we developed PerfectDisk Exchange to automate the process and save Exchange administrators time -- lots of time. PerfectDisk Exchange enables you to automatically shut down an Exchange Server, then copies selected data stores to local or remote volumes, and compacts and optimizes volumes. You can also return data stores to their applicable Exchange directories and restart Exchange Server either through the user interface or via a scheduled event. On Exchange 2000, 2003, 2007 and 2010, selected data stores are dismounted and no services need be stopped. This leaves your mail server available to other data stores it may manage.

A question we often hear is "how much free space is needed to perform an Exchange defrag?" The answer is 110%.

When your data store is being defragmented, a copy is made and defragmented, then copied back to the location of the active information store. In order to create this temporary working copy of the data store, there needs to be sufficient space on your hard drive. The process requires free space equal to 110% of the size of the data store. By default, the boot drive (i.e., the drive containing the WinSystem folder) will be used.

There's a way to defrag Exchange without all the aggravation and without all the time - with the proper Exchange defrag software. 
 
                                                    

                                           

I was reading yesterday that the consumer research firm NPD Group just announced that total consumer spend for video game software in 2009 is estimated to top $15.25 billion. Dang that's a lot of games!

NPD reported further that "in addition to the $10.5 billion spent in the U.S. by consumers on new physical video game software in 2009, the total spend by consumers within other industry channels in the U.S., including used video games, rentals, subscriptions, digital full game downloads, downloadable content, and mobile game apps., is estimated in the range of $4.5 to $4.75 billion. Consumers' digital game spending is concentrated among lower priced full-game downloads and downloadable content."

                                     

We regularly have many World of Warcraft users telling us that complete disk defragmentation and free space consolidation are two of their best WoW performance tips for improving WoW performance. The WoW users are the most vocal, but we hear from players of numerous other games as well, such as Fallout 3, etc.

If you're part of that big gaming spend, do yourself a favor and look for some good WoW performance tweaks.

From time to time, I’ve saluted Microsoft MVPs (Most Valuable Professionals),   recognizing the invaluable service they provide to the Microsoft user community in numerous categories. Having an MVP on staff here has only deepened my appreciation for what they do. Of course, I have to admit it’s nice to know and makes us proud that PerfectDisk is the preferred defragmenter of choice of MVPs around the world.

I love hearing their stories, which are relayed to us frequently. Keith Elder is a Microsoft MVP and INETA speaker, and runs the popular, informative and entertaining Deep Fried Bytes technology podcast as well as his blog, Words of Wisdom from the Elder. Keith is a big fan of the PerfectDisk base product, but also has experienced huge benefits from the PerfectDisk VMware Bundle.

Keith had a virtual machine that would not boot. He kept receiving an error message and it appeared to him that the disk was somewhat corrupted. Keith says he “ran PerfectDisk on it and after it was done it fixed the problem, and I’m still developing in this VM right now. Had it not been for PerfectDisk’s integration with VMware, I honestly don’t know what I  would have done next. Probably would have had to resort to recovering off site backups.”

                                            

How do you defrag VMware and boost virtualization performance?
 

• "I used to have problems defragging some drives. A few years ago I purchased PerfectDisk and haven't had a problem since."
• "PerfectDisk is the industry standard for serious defragmentation."
• "For defragmenting, you'd be hard pressed to find anything better than PerfectDisk."
• "PerfectDisk and it works like a charm. Not a hitch!"
• "I run PerfectDisk every night which defrags my drives. (A great tip I got on this forum."

1. The developers of your defrag utility meet regularly with Microsoft development teams, including file system experts, for a true understanding of file system behaviors, strategies and plans.
2. The defrag utility employs disk and file optimization strategies for the best possible drive optimization, rather than simply defragments files, so it is a true PC performance optimizer, beyond just a simple defrag utility.
3. It performs robust free space consolidation to significantly prevent fragmentation, reduce the rate of future fragmentation and improve write performance.
4.  It's smart enough to just defrag a file -- a single file or a few selected files -- rather than the entire drive, if that's all that is fragmented and that's all you need done at a particular time.
5. It doesn't force you into a single way to defrag - it provides flexible scheduling options that are accommodating to your activity and requirements, whether you need or want automatic background defragmentation during idle time, screen saver defrag, or daily or weekly schedules.
6. It optimizes boot files to improve boot time by 20% or more.
7. It provides a free, Microsoft-certified duplicate file remover and file recycler to further assist disk cleanup and optimization efforts.
8. It's simple enough for the novice user but with free, optional advanced features for power users.
9. It's smart enough to be the choice for tens of thousands of World of Warcraft users around the world to improve World of Warcraft performance and used by millions of gamers around the world to improve the performance of other PC games.
10.   It's intelligent enough to contain patent-pending technology that ensures no resource contention in virtual environments and can boost virtualization performance with specific solutions for vSphere and Hyper-V.
11.   It's passed the internal tests, pilot programs and RFPs of many of the world's largest companies and government agencies, and is deployed in and helping those enterprises today.
12.   It is certified by Microsoft for Windows 7.

The PerfectDisk 11 Client and Enterprise Console have been updated to Build 174. These latest builds include various bug fixes and minor enhancements.

You can “Check For Updates” in the products or wait for Autoupdate.

Client enhancements and fixes: 

• Correct issues connecting to and displaying data stores for Exchange 2010
• Change behavior when stopping a defrag pass. PerfectDisk used to display the statistics at the time you stopped even though they were inaccurate. PerfectDisk no longer does this.
• The display files in block feature has been disabled during a defrag and analyze pass since there was no data to display
• Corrected some display issues on the virtual machine tab
• Added support for translation into Japanese
• Corrected some statistical calculations when files are being added and deleted from the drive during the defragmentation pass.
• The list of drive types that can be impersonated was limited to prevent confusion. The purpose of impersonating drive types was due to the inability to accurately determine whether or not a drive is a solid state drive.
• Corrected a display issue on the Hyper-V host product. GUID was being displayed in lieu of the guest computer name.
• Clarified the code to ensure the user realized the schedules maximum duration only applies to the online portion of the schedule. There is not maximum duration for a boot-time defragmentation pass.
• Ensure that PerfectDisk does not attempt to perform an offline defragmentation pass on a FAT/FAT32 from a schedule. This functionality is not supported.
• Corrected some typo's in displayed text
• Changed the default behavior regarding file modification date on FAT/FAT32 drives. When no date exists we now display nothing. We used to display 1980.
• Improved the layout to better fit all the on screen data
• Corrected a bug when defragmenting drives greater than 2,147,483,648 clusters (8 TB with 4k cluster size)
• Improved boot-time defragmentation logging.
• Corrected a display issue with the schedule tab buttons when using Group Policy.
• Certain error messages were improved to aid the user in understanding what went wrong.

• Improved the task planner
• Corrected an infinite loop in the Console User Interface. PerfectDisk Enterprise Console would appear to hang.
• Corrected a crash in the Console user interface.
• Updated to SQLExpress Service pack 3.
• Displayed the Space explorer Client when PerfectDisk is not installed. This feature replies on PerfectDisk Client being present.
• Improved the historic data reports.
• Default Configuration profile data values have been adjusted to better represent the real world.
• Corrected Connect using PD option not being available if Hyper-V Host installed on Console computer.
• Corrected Console listing Hyper-V Host software as VMware.
• Corrected import of settings that created registry keys that were not correct type.
• Corrected Console reports that incorrectly did not include the Console computer.
• Corrected issue in Deployment wizard that incorrectly displayed local/GP schedules.

                                          

Just about every Windows user can benefit from a defrag utility, and the best results come from the best defrag tool. Certain applications and certain uses of the computer can benefit even more, and the area of video performance is one such particular subject. We're happy to count some of the world's best photographers and videographers as PerfectDisk users, but we're just as happy to have recreational and even novice users benefit from improved video performance with PerfectDisk. 

                                              

I know better than to talk about religion in a blog about technology and disk defragmentation. However, I'm happy to to write about a particular church's use of what it perceives as the best defrag tool for video performance. And that's where the Fundamentalist Baptist Church comes in. Located in in Santa Ana, California, in the heart of Orange County and just a few minutes from Disneyland, is where this defrag and video performance story starts. The chuirch records videos of its sermons and more. I'll let the pastor's words tell the story:

"The main reasons for my choosing PerfectDisk are:

     (1) Consolidation of files on hard drive
     (2) Defrag/consolidation of system files upon reboot

I do processing of video. I had used Diskeeper, but that software does not do consolidation of files on the hard drive. When you "capture" video on a hard drive, drive consolidation is very, very important. The reason is that, when a file splits due to running into another file ahead of it on the hard drive, it must fragment at the point. This stopping of the file and continuing it at another place on the hard drive can result in lost frames during a video capture. Lost frames are a "no no" for professional quality video capture, because it causes a momentary jump (because of a lost of frames) in movement when played back later. HDV capture from a Canon HV20 HDV video camera using Cineform was the specific application used.

I heard about your software on a Video production blog, from another guy who had the same problem (the need to consolidate files) and he recommended your product."

No matter what religion, there's only one best defrag tool for video performance.

                                        

Reasonable people can have reasonable disagreements, and often do. Politics, music, travel, to name a few. And of course, our favorite - defragmentation. And while we naturally feel PerfectDisk gives you the best defrag, what often makes the decision to use PerfectDisk a no brainer is the large amount of functionality beyond disk defragmentation and free space consolidation - PerfectDisk’s Space Management component.

From freeing up space consumed by unnecessary files, to being able to find and remove duplicate files with PerfectDisk's duplicate file removal, to seeing a full view of a drive, many users find these tools invaluable. And the fact that they come included with a top-line defragger is all the better.

                                        

Leslie Alder of Austin, Texas writes that she was leaning towards PerfectDisk because she was impressed with the free space consolidation “that other tools I looked at did not address very well. But then I came across the Space Management piece of PerfectDisk and I was sold. I do a lot of video editing and I love being able to clean up my drive. After the cleanup and a defrag, my laptop and desktop run like new.” A slow PC fix that includes the ability to easily find and delete duplicate files.

To the moon, Leslie.

                                               

I’m often asked whether one should or can defragment SQL databases - should you care about SQL defrag. While not an SQL expert, we have looked at this issue a lot and work with numerous organizations that benefit from regular defragmentation of their SQL databases with PerfectDisk. PerfectDisk uses the Microsoft MoveFile APIs, ensuring the SQL defrag of SQL database files is done safely and reliably, without having to first shut down SQL services. This includes both Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle.

PerfectDisk does not address internal fragmentation of databases. Fragmentation can, and usually does, exist at both the SQL Server level and at the file level within Windows. There is SQL defrag software -- specific vendor tools to address SQL Server-level fragmentation. But defragmenting at the file level, what I refer to as SQL defrag, will usually also speed up your SQL server. The SQL server doesn’t know about the file system layout - it leaves that to the operating system.  But that means it also won’t and can’t report on file system fragmentation. And that’s where PerfectDisk comes in.

                                             

Besides defragmenting files, PerfectDisk’s free space consolidation via its Space Restoration Technology helps reduce the rate of fragmentation on SQL servers, as PerfectDisk creates large chunks of contiguous free space, which helps as your database grows. Best practice for highly available SQL servers is to create files on contiguous space that’s already been defragmented, planning ahead of time for data growth and building that growth into the size of the initial files.

Don’t leave your SQL servers behind - defrag them. SQL defrag for SQL server performance improvements.