Review: Diskeeper 10 Professional Premier Edition defragging software

Diskeeper 10 is aimed at people who want a faster, more powerful defragging program than the limited utility bundled with Windows XP.

Diskeeper Corporation’s program takes up around 11MB of space on the hard drive. It runs in the background but won't hog your system memory.

Installation is hassle-free thanks to the quick-start guide and the program is relatively straightforward to run.

Windows recognises Diskeeper as the new default disk management tool; this prevents any confusion resulting from both tools attempting to optimise your drive(s).

For those familiar with the intricacies of disk structure, this Professional Premier Edition offers a layered approach to its more complex features. The depth and breadth of the disk statistics provided should be enough to satisfy the most knowledge-hungry of power users.

For less experienced users, Diskeeper generates recommendations for settings on the basis of the disk usage data it gathers.

The Job Scheduler lets you configure both the disk and CPU priority of the background defragging process. Once your hard drive has been thoroughly optimised it’s merely a matter of routine maintenance to keep it that way.

One advantage Diskeeper has over the Windows tool is the ability to efficiently defragment drives that are low on free space. The software doesn’t waste time processing massive files that don’t warrant defragging.

Alongside the defragging tool, Diskeeper’s drive performance calibration tool, I-Faast, improves disk access on NTFS drives by studying drive usage patterns over a week or more.

Graphs show you how the performance of files on the disk is impacted by the current level of fragmentation.

You can achieve much of what Diskeeper provides by downloading a selection of readily available freeware/shareware. However, on the whole they will not be so neatly presented or tightly packaged as Diskeeper.

Defragging your hard drive results in improved access speeds for users with large data throughput, as well as speedier backups. However, drives used mainly for archival purposes won’t use this package to its full potential.

Regular PC users should instead look at the Home Edition (£23), which includes the main defragging options without the advanced tools.

Related reviews :
Tuneup Utilities 2006
Highly effective Windows utilities for a reasonable price