• Diskeeper 2010 is fully functional and operates correctly as intended on systems using the FDCC under Windows XP and Windows Vista.
• The standard installation, operation, maintenance, update of Diskeeper 2010 does not alter the configuration settings from the approved FDCC configuration. Diskeeper uses the Windows Installer Service for installation to the default "program files" directory and is able to silently install and uninstall.
• The Diskeeper 2010 performed correctly on a standard user level account in all functional areas on both operating systems.

You can contact your Public Sector Account Representative at Diskeeper Corporation with any questions about Diskeeper 2010 FDCC compliance.

Find out more about the FDCC here.

Here's a cool succes about something many IT pro's wouldn't normally associate with defrag:

When we began to invest in Diskeeper we had 8 servers and over 100+ clients that ran for years and would run for many more years. Every 11 weeks we start a new quarter and cycled on average 400 users across all of them each quarter. So you can image the amount of data our students move across these machines. Not to mention the amount of data that is moved across our servers with 600+ users. 

Diskeeper drastically improved our disk performance and kept it constant with the automatic defragmentation during idle time. Diskeeper not only helped with maintaining the disk performance, but also made it possible for quick disaster recovery.

We had an old file server that crashed and file backups were being neglected, so we had to run file recovery on the RAID 5 array. Without Diskeeper automatically defragging the drive and keeping all the pieces of the files together, we would have lost 50% of the data; instead we were able to recover 95% of the 300 Gb of information. 

Aaron Cowell,

Network Administrator,

Davis College, Toledo, OH

Proud supporter of:

ShoreTel VOIP, Moodle, Microsoft, Diskeeper

Solution Helps Organizations Increase Performance, Lengthen Equipment Lifecycles, Enhance Efficiency and Reduce Energy Usage 

Diskeeper Corporation, innovators in performance and reliability technologies, today announced that it is commemorating  its 30th year of pioneering breakthrough technologies with more than a dozen industry firsts by offering discounts of up to 30 percent on all Diskeeper Corporation volume licenses.  

• With more than 38 million licenses sold Diskeeper Corporation supports customers worldwide including more than 90 percent of Fortune 500 enterprises, and nearly 70 percent of the Forbes Global 1000, as well as thousands of enterprises, government agencies, independent software vendors (ISVs) and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).

• CIOs, IT Managers and System Administrators around the world rely on Diskeeper ® performance software to increase computing speeds, reduce system freezes and crashes, improve backup times, lower resource usage, protect data and shorten boot times.

• Every day, Diskeeper Corporation solutions prevent more than 12.5 billion fragments from thrashing hard drives, providing unparalleled performance and reliability for laptops, desktops and servers.

• Diskeeper Corporation’s industry first Undelete® real time data protection solution saves organizations tremendous amounts of time and money by guarding against intentional and unintentional data loss, protecting all deleted files and allowing instant file recovery with just a few mouse clicks.

• 1986: Diskeeper performance software released as the first online automatic defragmenter, which quickly became the best-selling third-party product for OpenVMS operating systems.
• 1995: Diskeeper is the first defragmenter solution certified for Microsoft Windows, starting a long-running verification process that maintains code reliability.
• 1995: Diskeeper Corporation partners with Microsoft and co-created APIs that were released with NT 4.0 in 1996.
• 1998 Network Undelete 1.0 unveiled as the first complete real-time file protection technology for Windows servers.
• 2003: Diskeeper 8.0 is introduced as a breakthrough approach to help optimize terabyte-sized drives with Terabyte Volume Engine™ technology.
• 2005: I-FAAST® intelligent file access acceleration sequencing technology introduced that accelerates access to most used files.
• 2006: InvisiTasking® technology revolutionizes background processing with zero overhead.
• 2008: Diskeeper releases HyperFast® solid state drive optimizer for PCs.
• 2009: Diskeeper Corporation introduces V-locity™ virtual platform disk optimizer.
• 2009: Diskeeper Corporation releases IntelliWriteÔ technology, the first fragmentation prevention technology.
• 2010: The release of HyperBoot™ boot-time optimization software, which accelerates full computer start up and boots a PC directly into Windows.

As a Gold Partner, the first commercial defragmenter designed for WHS, and even one of the first 8 products to declare support for WHS when Bill Gates first announced it at CES several years back, we’ve been real close with the development team at MS.

The MS team’s insight into the needs and capabilities of defrag has led to significant cooperation as they complete the new Drive Extender. We’ve had many calls over the past months and are very happy to say that many of our suggestions and requests have been accommodated. The functionality that has been added from those meetings will result in well integrated and functional third party software solutions.

Supporting Drive Extender 2.0…

Vail, which is in public beta, has already been generating a great deal of buzz on WHS forums. Drive Extender (DE) is a storage subsystem that extends storage functionality above and beyond what a typical Windows NTFS volume offers. Key purposes of DE are to offer fully automated and easy to use storage. All the complexities associated with fault tolerance solutions like RAID to provide drive reliability, expanding storage over time, and even solving data reliability concerns of commodity drives.

Drive Extender in Windows Home Server today implements drives independently and pools them into a common volume. This pool of storage is then presented as a single volume to the user (i.e. D:\). And, just off the root of this pool (D:\shares) you had all your WHS shared folders; e.g. Users, Photos, Videos, etc…

The user experience of WHS today is already such that you don’t need to care or interact with the volumes, you could even argue that its discouraged.

What is unique in DE 2.0 is that this paradigm has kind of been flip flopped. While it all still looks like a common repository the delineation of storage now begins with those shared folders. So, as an example, let’s take the shared folder “Photos”. In DE 2.0 that folder now becomes a dedicated NTFS volume presented out of the shared storage pool. The folder “Videos” becomes its own NTFS volume, and so on. This design was introduced to support features like real time folder level duplication, etc.. The only minor side effect is that because there are only 26 letters in the English Alphabet, there will be a limitation of the shared folders you can create in this location on WHS. Not a big deal, given the value of the features that this new design offers.

If you’ve read this blog and the comments, you’ll pick up that DE is extending a volume (i.e. a shared folder), in 1 GB chunks, taking those chunks from the total available storage pool.  

DE 2.0 now adds this to their storage virtualization solution. As you add more data to a shared folder, DE 2.0 will allocate, in 1 GB chunks, more space to the shared folder/volume from the common storage pool. And, should you delete ALL the data in a 1 GB chunk, the 1 GB chunk will dynamically return to the available storage pool to be allocated to any other shared folder that may need the space. DE is well designed to fill up 1 GB chunk before requesting to use more. Very cool stuff!

Here’s a demo of how the provisioning works. Assuming 20GB of space (divided into those 1GB chunks)

You now start to fill up storage adding a little over 4GB of photos and a little over 2GB of music files. That has now pulled eight 1GB chunks from the common pool and these volumes have dynamically expanded to hold up to 5 GB and 3 GB respectively. Keep in mind that files place in the Photos folder will NOT reside on the same 1 GB chunk that contains Music files. In this case, under the DE “covers” they are on completely separate Windows volumes.

And, as those eight 1 GB chunks are provisioned to shared folder volumes, the storage pool shrinks by 8GB.

 

Now… If you delete all the MP3 music files that reside in one of those 1GB chunks…

DE can return that chunk back to the storage pool for re-provisioning re-use with any other shared folder.

 

Subsequently shrinking the Music folder/volume to two 1 GB chunks:

 

However, there are some conditions in which this provisioning technique can use some assistance, and Diskeeper will be helping out (per the request of the WHS/DE team at MS). Should you delete some of the data from 1 GB chunks, but not all of the data within a 1 GB chunk, you can have a lot of 1 GB chunks allocated to a shared folder/volume, but not actually using all of the space it is taking from the common storage pool. Diskeeper will be helping in these cases to group together all the data spread across sparsely filled 1 GB chunks. We’ll effectively be squishing the data together aligning it along 1 GB boundaries. The benefit of this is that some 1 GB chunks may then be freed up and returned to the storage pool to be assigned to your other shared folders.

Here’s a quick graphic to explain the process. Five 1 GB chunks are taken up by the Photos folder/volume. Over time, unwanted photos may be deleted, but the space they were taking up is not made available to any folder other than Photos. In order to make the space (3GB in this example) available for Videos or Music, you would need to move the data out of the sparsely filled chunks. Once done, those now empty 1 GB chunks can be used elsewhere.

  

Is this an issue you’ll come across? Maybe. If you do, it’ll likely be a bit of time and a lot of file deletions down the road. The Microsoft provisioning design is well suited to most users who mainly add and retain data. Those who do housecleaning or more involved data management can benefit from the upcoming Diskeeper solution – stay tuned.

While we’d like to take credit for this new feature in a future release of Diskeeper HomeServer, it was quite frankly MS directly asking us, as a partner, to add this into our product. Perhaps they’ll add this data squishing into WHS down the road? In the mean time, you can look to Diskeeper to help.

PS: thanks to the Microsoft WHS team for reviewing and approving this blog post.

We have been running Diskeeper 2010 EnterpriseServer for two months on an HP EVA SAN 4000 and 4400, with 4 1TB volumes each.  

Diskeeper removed over 45 million fragments in the last two months on a specific volume that had only 15% free space, and IntelliWrite prevented 24,000 fragments. I believe that will be even better as soon as we can extend this volume to two TB. 

We see a big improvement on the backup time which came down from 48 hours to 32 now, and it’s still going down. 

I believe Diskeeper worth the price and I never had any trouble with software from Diskeeper Corporation, so that alone narrowed the field of choices. 

Jean-François Poirier
Technicien Telecommunication
Spectra Premium Industries Inc.

We just updated and released a new version of a popular freeware product for IT Professionals managing Windows networks. The DPAN 3.0 feature set was already included in Diskeeper Administrator 2010 release, but is now available independently (and free).  

Specifically the DPAN 3.0 free app now implements the following new features:

• Support for Windows 7 and Windows 2008 Server R2

• Support for 64-bit operating systems

• Scanning Active Directory security groups

• Improved Performance Reports consistent with Diskeeper 2010 and Diskeeper Administrator 2010

• Help that explains DPAN operation and reports

• UI and usability improvements

You can download it here. 

Sure I'd love to give a recommendation for Diskeeper.  We are running 2010 now with Diskeeper Administrator and so far I love the improvements. Many of our Lotus Domino servers were so busy that realtime defrag had trouble keeping up, but with the new IntelliWrite technology preventing most of the fragmentation in the first place, we finally have it under control.

The systems were running well prior to introducing Diskeeper, but we deployed the software during a project where we virtualized over 80% of our production servers.  Because of the shared storage aspect of our virtual platform I knew that fragmentation would become a serious issue if we didn't deal with it from day one.  The  Lotus Domino servers often had trouble keeping up with the fragmentation rate but most other servers did well with Diskeeper Server 2008.   

The new Diskeeper 2010 has our fragmentation in check across the boards and I couldn't be happier with it.

Amesbury, MA

http://www.muntersglobal.com

If you live in on the west coast (USA), you may have seen an ad campaign about happy cows coming from California. Given we're a CA-based software company we concur.

OK wait a minute. Why are we talking about cows? What does this have to do with defrag? Maybe you're thinking "Michael's talking bovine, he's had a few too many".

Well maybe yes, but... I do have a point.  

CoW, or "copy on write" refers to a low level technology that looks at block data changes and then takes a particular action. Every time there is a write, a CoW technology would seek to make a copy of just the changes - not the entire new file. That action may be part of inline data dedupe, may be a snapshot, etc. The basic point is that CoW is used to isolate changes to data at a granular level rather than at a file level.

The consideration is that most CoW technologies are unable to distinguish between changes to data or movement of pieces of data, due to a defragmentation job. In other words, if you run a defrag, CoW may think there are actual data changes to files, and then take action to make block-change copies, run a dedupe, etc...

Holy CoW you say!

So, it is possible that a defrag, any kind of defrag, causes a CoW based technology to go into hyperactive mode. That may mean a CDP (continuous data protection)/snapshot program may be triggered in to keeping/taking far more copies that it needs to. It is basically fooled into thinking that a defrag represents actual changes to data, and that they need to process those changes. Now this is a false processing but, because most CoW solutions function underneath the file system layer, they simply cannot differentiate that actions that take place at the file system are not changes to data, but rather data-movement-for-optimization reasons.

So, if we're talking about a CoW solution that takes snapshots, we could see an increase in the amount of copies that a snapshot solution would have to take. That would make for a fairly fat CoW (a lot of extra data storage demands created by not understanding defrag).

CoW based solutions that work at the file system level (NTFS), have the possibility to recognize changes due to defrag and differentiate them from changes due to new actual data to a file. One such CoW solution is Microsft's VSS (Volume Shadow Copy Service). However, as noted, most CoW technologies operate at storage layers that are abstracted from the local disk file system - they operate at levels underneath the file system. Again, that means defrag jobs in the file system will not be recognized by these solutions, and a defrag job of any kind, will cause unnecessary copies.

In comes IntelliWrite. Now, it makes sense to think that IntelliWrite was invented as a faster and, perhaps cooler, solution to fragmentation. But, the truth is that solving fragmentation at the source (when it is created) is vital to ensure compatibility with many of the CoW solutions that may be implemented at virtualization host or SAN layer (i.e. underneath and hence, unaware of the file system).

So, in a nutshell, IntelliWrite was very much designed to ensure that defrag offered full compatibility with modern storage technologies. That, we feel, makes for happy CoWs.

A cure for cancer it is not, but in the category of performance (defrag) software, IntelliWrite is quite the bold, unorthodox step forward. Like many things new and revolutionary it is to be questioned, critiqued and qualified.

When we created IntelliWrite we had to first question the old way of doing things. Same goes for you, the user. You also need to form your own opinion on whether a new approach to eliminating fragmentation is warranted and worthwhile.

Now of course new does not necesarrily mean better, but new can, when done right change the way of things... for the better.

Our customers are our best and favorites critics. We hope we have provided you value and have earned your approval.

IntelliWrite technology is, as the name would imply, smart. Not only is it a better solution to removing fragmentation (it prevents fragmentation), but it actually self-learns; i.e. it gets smarter over time. Or perhaps more simply as one customer, who per his company policy must remain anonymous :-(, said, "crazy smart".

IntelliWrite learns how the various different applications on your system write data, much like advanced heuristic anti-virus solutions that learn "patterns" and can then proactively block new, as yet unreported, malware. IntelliWrite adapts to the applications on your system and how they write, and thereby fragment your files. That adaptive learning makes IntelliWrite increasingly more effective on your computer.  

Another part of the technology is an awareness of its surroundings. IntelliWrite automatically detects conditions where it might affect system performance and backs off, thus providing the best balance for performance – improves performance when fragmentation can be prevented and does not impact free space fragmentation when it might matter (i.e. when the available space is very low). One such easy-to-demonstrate case is on volumes with less than 2GB free space; IntelliWrite disables itself.

We began the process of securing the intellectual property rights to this revolutionary innovation prior to the release. You don't have to be a crazy Irishman to know that if you're looking for "The only way to prevent fragmentation before it happens(tm)", you've come to the right place.

Diskeeper 2010 Administrator is now complete and available for broad use. You can download trialware from here. For customers previously using the Release Candidate (RC), you can go to your Diskeeper Account page and download your full licensed version. We made numerous user experience enhancements from the RC.

One improved UI example is the new start page:

The new major feature in Diskeeper 2010 Administrator is the “at-a-glance” network-wide overview of disk performance and system health. This network performance dashboard includes access for more details on noted issues and ability to directly initiate tasks such as remote control, deployment, and configuration to quickly remedy the situation. The Dashboard provides important customizable alerts on systems that have:

• Low free space

• Severe file fragmentation

• Extreme paging file or meta data fragmentation

• Failures to defragment or where Diskeeper is not operational

• Product activation expiration

• Diskeeper updates available for installation

The "alerts" are now available for both computers with Diskeeper and those without it. As with prior versions of Diskeeper Administrator, "reports" continue to be available for both systems without and without Diskeeper.

Ops Manager (both MOM and SCOM) Management Packs are included with the Diskeeper Administrator full version. If you require a trial of this solution, please contact our Corporate Sales dept.

As of December 31st, Diskeeper 2010 is certified. 

Since the ground breaking release of Diskeeper 2010 I've seen comments that other defragmenters prevent fragmentation.

Ok, so let's technically dissect "how" such a claim may come about...

Does consolidating free space reduce future fragmentation? Yes it helps your odds, but reducing fragmentation and preventing fragmentation are not the same. If you are relying on consolidated free space to offset re-fragmentation you need some luck that the big, or closely located, chunk of free space is where the file(s) being written are going to be placed.

Only ONE free space segment means only ONE place for a file write to go, hence no fragmentation. - That is a true statement, but...

Windows is a robust and dynamic OS. There is a constant and infinite stream of background file writes, modifications and deletions, not to mention all the user generated activity from applications. That makes for a tremendous amount of change in the files and file locations on a volume. Understanding this relentless activity is important because it belies the concept of creating a singular massive chunk of free space as the solution to prevent fragmentation. Any "pretty disk" that gets created (i.e. all files in one area and all the space in another) may look nice in a visual display, but it just doesn't last for more than a few seconds.

You can imagine that attempts to maintain that one massive singular free space area would make for a defragmenter that has to always pack gigabytes of non-fragmented files together with every background deletion/creation event. Busy, busy, busy defragmenter. But hey, a lot of a shiny colors and smiley face emoticons. Yay! 

Now, are there specific benefits to large free space chunks? Absolutely (e.g. shrinking a volume), and Diskeeper provides this too. The key in efforts to consolidate free space into a handful of larger chunks needs to be balanced so that the cost (power usage, wear and tear, system resources, etc...) does not outweigh the benefit (performance). Again, this is the perspective that Diskeeper applies as it optimizes your Windows file systems.   

Now speaking theoretically, if ALL free space were in ONE big chunk, you would be forced to write a file in ONE piece. It couldn't possibly fragment, right? Wrong... 

The bigger issue isn't even about trying to keep some singular giant free space chunk available, because even if you did, there is a more significant obstacle. Windows can write numerous files from numerous processes simultaneously, or more accurately, under the impression of being simultaneous. In reality it is commonplace that some files (File A below) will continue to be held open for writing more data, all the while newer files (Files B & C) start and complete writing all their data. As the first file, which has not yet been "closed", is still being expanded, it has to be written "around" the newer placed files. This causes that first file to fragment around those more recent files that were placed in the way.

This happens ALL the time - your browsers download of a website's many associated files is a perfect example.  

In summary:

Reducing fragmentation is a passive act. Preventing fragmentation requires more than neatly ordered files and free space, it requires a truly intelligent and advanced design that dictates HOW files are written. Only Diskeeper 2010 with IntelliWrite technology offers fragmentation prevention.

So, if you prefer to not leave eliminating fragmentation to chance, given you are spending your hard earned money, and "you wanna play rough [with fragmentation] ok, say hello to our little friend", Diskeeper Twenty-Ten.

Chip Magazine (www.chip.de) is a premier technology publication in Germany, and much of Europe for that matter. They recently completed a defrag head-to-head comparison of 6 various defragmenters, including the Windows Vista built-in product (which also happens to be very similar to Windows 7 built-in).

The timing worked out that we were able to submit Diskeeper 2010 beta software into their challenge.

And...

We're excited to announce Diskeeper took 1st place based on their rigorous technical testing process. Ausgezeichnet!

Here's a screen shot of the points awarded (only Diskeeper received the max 5) and placement of the entrants (only Diskeeper ranked in the top class). I removed the other product names to protect the "guilty" :-).

If you're a subscriber, you can read the whole 4 page review (in German mind you).

Diskeeper has just been awarded the Editor's Best award (Gold) by Windows IT Pro. 

"Diskeeper does its job well. It defragments in the background without hurting system performance and doesn't require defragmentation scheduling." —Zac Wiggy, assistant editor, Windows IT Pro

"Diskeeper 2009 is loaded with features, works as advertised, and can bring the most choppy and fragmented hard drive back to silky-running smoothness." —Jeff James, editor in chief, Windows IT Pro

Diskeeper also took Silver in the Community Choice Award; recognition from users for which we are very appreciative. Our way of saying thanks will be to go right back to work and innovate more new technologies to improve your system's performance and reliability.

Diskeeper 2010 is all about a revolutionary new technology called IntelliWrite. Never before has fragmentation prevention been a reality - until now.

So what does IntelliWrite really provide your systems?

To demonstrate its benefits, we did some tests using two identical systems to measure how much fragmentation is prevented. In these tests, lower scores are better (means less fragments on the system).

IntelliWrite with Microsoft Office:

IntelliWrite on Microsoft SQL Server:

And how much faster your computer operates (Higher scores are better):

WOW, pretty awesome!

That word [awesome] has been almost unanimously applied to Diskeeper 2010 feedback we've heard from beta testers and early adopters. 

Get the full scoop on IntelliWrite, and see more test results in the new Diskeeper 2010 white paper: Inside Diskeeper 2010 with IntelliWrite.pdf (551.60 kb)