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Jason Stamper's Blog
Defraggers attack Vista, each other
January 10, 2007
Warning: this is not a blog about yesterday’s launch of the Apple iPhone. No, it’s about a furore going on in a very different market segment.
Diskeeper’s claim that its recently launched Diskeeper 2007 disk defragmentation utility makes it the first defragmenter that has no impact on the system it is running on has been greeted with derision by rival Raxco Software. But both vendors agree that the disk defragmentation tool bundled with Vista is at best inadequate.
Competition in the market is stiff, as with escalating storage demands being placed on hard disks, defragmentation is as vital as ever. Yet disk fragmentation is a problem often overlooked by enteprise IT departments, if not when it comes to servers then almost certainly when it comes to end users' workstations.
Fragmentation of hard disks in servers, workstations and storage devices is thought to be a major cause of performance degradation. In the white paper “The Impact of Disk Fragmentation”, the author -- security and systems expert Joe Kinsella -- claimed that heavy fragmentation can cause applications such as Microsoft Word to slow down by a factor of 15, anti-virus scanners and Outlook by a factor of three, and Internet Explorer by a factor of two.
Disk fragmentation is the fault of the file system, in Windows’ case NTFS. The file system tells the computer where to find specific data on the disk and where there is free space available for new files to be created.
But over time both file fragmentation and free space fragmentation can occur when the file system inadvertently scatters individual files or free space across several locations, instead of keeping them in contiguous chunks. The result can be performance problems, corrupted files or even application or system crashes.
Enter disk defragmentation tools, or ‘defraggers’, which go through the disk and put the pieces back together again. The trouble is, the defraggers themselves can be resource-hungry, so the defragmentation utility vendors have mostly added scheduling options so users or administrators can run them when their systems are not busy doing something else.
But according to Diskeeper, scheduling is no longer necessary as its latest version, Diskeeper 2007, has something called InvisiTasking, making it, “The first truly automatic defragmenter which defragments files on the go without any impact on the system.”
This is a notion that the CEO of rival Raxco Software, Bob Nolan, takes strong exception to: “This approach is based on the utilization of system idle time,” he told me. “In order to determine when the system is idle you need to monitor CPU, disk I/O and memory. The monitor itself uses resources; and of course it runs while the system is doing other work.”
“All disk defragmenters use some CPU, memory and disk I/O to defragment a file; to that extent there is system impact,” Nolan added.
I called Diskeeper. Sales engineer Ergun Kazali told me that the firm stands by its claim. “Yes, Diskeeper 2007 takes advantage of system idle time,” he said. “It taps into unused resources, so there is pretty much no impact on the system, which means there is no need to set a schedule of when to defragment.”
Kazali said that rather than having one large defragmentation engine, Diskeeper 2007 uses several smaller engines that do not take so long to load into memory. The result is the ability to defragment sections of the drive automatically, when Diskeeper notices that there is system idle time available for it to make use of.
But if Diskeeper 2007 has little or no effect on other system resources when it runs in the background, why is it still possible for users to set a schedule of when they do and do not want it to be able to run? “Really that’s just for peace of mind or in case they want to run a technical routine,” Kazali told me.
Raxco’s Nolan remains unconvinced though. “Our enterprise customers like PerfectDisk because they control when it runs,” he said. “PerfectDisk defragments 99-100% of the files and consolidates the free space all in one pass. With single-pass defragmentation there is no need for a monitor or continual defragmentation.”
Nolan’s argument is that rival defragmentation utilities, including Diskeeper’s, need several passes across the disk, each of which improves the state of fragmentation only incrementally. He claims that Raxco’s PerfectDisk is the only one that is a single-pass defragger.
“I think that’s pulling the wool over customers’ eyes,” said Diskeeper’s Kazali.
While he conceded that his firm’s tool does require multiple passes, Kazali argued that, “The key thing is to eliminate defragmentation without causing system degradation. Whether it takes one pass or 50, the number of passes is not the issue. Our tool works automatically in the background without downtime.”
One thing that both vendors can agree on is that standalone defragmentation utilities are far superior to the one bundled free with Windows Vista. “We wrote the defragger for Windows XP and that’s what they bundled with it,” said Kazali. “But [Microsoft] continued to work on it, and we’ve done lots of tests that have found that the defragger that comes with Vista is actually less efficient than the one that was bundled with XP.”
Diskeeper and Raxco both argue that the defragger bundled with Vista lacks many features necessary for the enterprise market, not least flexible scheduling, management and reporting. Diskeeper’s Kazali points out that it also lacks its own InvisiTasking capability to run in the background without affecting other system resources; Raxco’s Nolan notes that it too is a multi-pass defragger unlike Raxco’s.
Raxco is here. Diskeeper is here. Neither sell iPhones.
Comments
Hi Jason,
I'm the Product Manager for Diskeeper. I’d like to clarify a few points Ergun discussed.
Diskeeper Corp provided Microsoft the defragmenter for Windows 2000 in the late 90's. Microsoft owns the code exclusively, and has modified it over the various Windows releases.
The product in Windows Vista is a good product, and an improvement in resource efficiency from Windows XP. The general "home user" may well find it sufficient for their needs. That said, it does have some shortcomings and power users and businesses will still look to third party offerings for advanced features and management. Diskeeper Corp does not engage in FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) marketing. I hope nothing in your discussion with our company ever implied that we were "attacking" another product or vendor. We take great pride in maintaining a high level of business ethics. We encourage potential customers to test other defragmentation options and discover the truth for themselves about how those products work and of course, how Diskeeper works.
The new InvisiTasking in Diskeeper 2007 is the base technology that supports the ability to defragment automatically, in Real Time. Defragmenting in the background, only on idle system time, eliminates the need to do what has been commonly called a "defrag pass". This process does not use resources to ‘monitor’ the system. It really is a revolutionary METHOD of addressing the overhead of scheduling, and it is understandably difficult for technical individuals familiar with the standard way of how applications access system resources, to readily understand. While the intellectual property of InvisiTasking is protected (many times over), Diskeeper Corp is admittedly conservative when discussing exactly how it works; at least for the time being. That said, it absolutely works and the proof can be personally discovered by anyone testing out the software.
With the inclusion of InvisiTasking, the Diskeeper product introduced the ability to turn Diskeeper on or off, on a volume basis. This feature is even more robust than in past versions. As Ergun, noted it is almost entirely for “piece of mind”, but also for the rare instance if/when some technical issue arises. Some business-use applications are incompatible or less compatible with defragmentation (of any kind), such as File Replication Services (noted in a Microsoft support article). Users long familiar with Diskeeper find the new graphic controls much more flexible and easier to use than in past versions.
Best Regards,
Michael Materie
Director of Product Management
Diskeeper Corporation
Hi Jason,
I'm with Raxco Software, makers of PerfectDisk, and wanted to add a couple of comments.
Michael states in his comment to you that InvisiTasking "...does not use resources to ‘monitor’ the system...." Many people we have talked to point out to us that an application which purports to monitor a system by definition needs to use resources. In fact, in a posting by Michael in the Diskeeper blog, Michael has written that InvisiTasking must "...monitor CPU, memory and the more significant hardware bottlenecks of the disk drive and network."
In the same blog entry, Michael also states that "InvisiTasking takes a pro-active approach to instantly detect resource usage". In order to instantly detect something, that something must be continually monitored.
Just a couple of things for your readers to think about.
Thanks,
Joe Abusamra
Raxco Software, Inc.
Interesting thread you've put together Jason!
Hopefully this does not come across as defensive but, based on recent comments, let me clarify again for anyone reading this. Diskeeper does not implement a “monitor”, e.g. some process that watches system resource usage. If I ever said that directly then I erred and I will correct it. The Diskeeper blog, to my knowledge, does not state this (for any comments/corrections, I can be reached at the blog).
There is an awareness, by the InvisiTasking technology, of the system's resources. It is a NEW WAY of accessing resources. I do understand, as I mentioned, a technical person might readily infer that “to monitor” meant that a process was watching the system and then instructing Diskeeper to take some action.
And I understand that a technical person may find InvisiTasking “to good to be true”. It really comes down to the fact that marketing claims about the product are irrelevant. It either works or it doesn’t. You don’t need to take my word for it or “buy” the into the technology just because I or someone else is talking about it.
Test it, see it work for you, then make a decision.
I hope this helps clarify the technology a bit better.
Best Regards,
Michael Materie
Diskeeper Corporation
Jason,
Thanks for posting the refutation to the statements made on October 14th upon the launch of Diskeeper 2007.
I would agree that the best way to determine any of this is to test the products themselves. And be sure to check resources consumed, and fragmentation and free space levels, and make your own determination if something is being monitored, "monitored," or some such thing.
Thanks,
Joe Abusamra
Raxco Software
Great feedback. I'm amazed so many people care. Back that how it is when you have passion for it I guess.
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