62 | MAXIMUMPC | JUN 08 | http://www.maximumpc.com
PerfectDisk 2008
PerfectDisk defrags the fastest, but fails in the subsequent benchmarks
Don’t Waste Your Money or Time!
You shouldn’t break the bank for negligible performance gains
P
erfectDisk 2008 ($40, http://www.raxco.com)
sports a similar feature set to Diskeeper- In fact, the programs are nearly
identical in basic functionality. But PerfectDisk
does tweak a few of our favorite features just
a bit. For example, PerfectDisk, like Diskeeper,
allows you to establish an automatic defragmen-
tation that runs whenever your computer is idle;
however, it also lets you tie defragmentation runs
to your screensaver. When your screensaver
starts, PerfectDisk starts. We like this additional
fl exibility and would welcome even further cus-
tomization in future editions of the soft ware.
For the time conscious, PerfectDisk 2008
does a great job of estimating exactly how
long the defragmentation process will take
and provides approximate CPU usage info and
fragmentation level at the beginning and end
of the run. Aft er a thorough analysis of your
drive, the program suggests ways to improve
performance. In our case, we needed a boot-
time defragmentation. But we couldn’t select it
from a menu—we had to run the analysis fi rst,
which then gave us that option.
The program reported that our test drive
was 7.5-percent fragmented. Following a two
hour, 24 minute defragmentation, our startup
times increased by approximately 40 seconds
compared to the startup times following Vista’s
defragmentation and increased by two sec-
onds when compared to the fragmented drive.
PerfectDisk was the only defragger that im-
proved our original shutdown time, albeit by
just four seconds. But it also netted us a minor
loss of performance in the PCMark Vantage
benchmark—a decrease of 6 percent over the
measured performance following a defragmen-
tation by Vista’s built-in application.W
ith all of the benchmarking com-
pleted, we find it rather suspi-
cious that disk defragmentation
did nothing to improve the performance of
our machine. However, we must note that
our test drive was not terribly fragmented
to begin with due to Vista’s auto-defragger
running on our test bed. Even the paid-for
programs were unable to yield any positive
gains—quite the opposite, in some instances.
We had high hopes for Diskeeper at first.
Given the relatively high level of fragmenta-
tion it quoted compared to Vista’s built-in
app, we assumed the program’s analysis rou-
tines were seeing fragmentation that Vista
couldn’t. In turn, we expected Diskeeper to
do a better job of moving files around and
ultimately give us better benchmark num-
bers than the Vista client.
That was wishful thinking on our part,
as Diskeeper didn’t trump the Vista defrag-
mentation routine at all. While it did beatPerfectDisk by 150 points in our PCMark Van-
tage test, we hardly consider this a trouncing.
We even fi red up both programs’ boot-time
defragmentation options to see if these ad-
ditional features would make any diff erence
on our benchmarks. Zilch.
We like the Vista defragmentation program
for the simple fact that it’s, well, there. It comes
with Vista and is enabled by default and runs
its defragmentation routines during the wee
hours of the morning. And even if you alter this
time or run your own manual defragmentation,
the program runs at a low processor priority,
so you can easily multitask without hampering
your computing experience.
That said, we hate that Vista gives you
no estimated time of completion. You also
get no way to see what the application is
doing, any graphical representation of how
fragmented your drive is, or any of the other
features we’ve come to expect in even the
most entry-level of defragmentation ap-plications. Even if the pretty moving colored
blocks don’t correspond to the actual data
on our drives, at least they give us some-
thing to look at during the interminable
two-hour-plus defrag process. You even
have to run a command-line version of the
application just to see an analysis of your
drive’s fragmentation level.
If you don’t mind manually running
your defragger and you can’t live without
a visual representation of the fragmenta-
tion level of your drive, try Auslogics’s Disk
Defrag. It doesn’t outperform Vista in our
tests, but it runs faster than the operating
system’s built-in defragger, and it displays
a pretty picture to let you know that it’s
working. Even if disk defragmentation ulti-
mately does nothing for your computer—as
our benchmark numbers would have us
believe—you don’t need to spend money on
a third-party program when Auslogics’s Disk
Defrag is a serviceable free solution.You won’t see all of
PerfectDisk’s available
defragmentation options
unless you fi rst run an
analysis of the drive.Best scores are bolded.BENCHMARKS(^) Vista Drive Fragmented Fragmented Fragmented Vista Drive Vista Defrag Windows Windows Windows Vista Defrag 2008 DefragPerfectDisk 2008 DefragPerfectDisk PerfectDisk
PCMark Overall 3,114 3,162 2,952
Startup (sec) 172 133 170
Shutdown (sec) 20 34 16
THE DISK
DEFRAG
DIFFERENCE