Diskeeper 7 vs. Diskeeper 9

Just a quick question... is it worth it for me to upgrade to Diskeeper 9 Pro in lieu of my current Diskeeper 7 that I'm running?

I hear 9 can defrag and move pagefiles to the outer tracks of HDs, etc. That's my main concern... nothing better than a happy pagefile.

Cheers!

I hear 9 can defrag and move pagefiles to the outer tracks of HDs, etc. That's my main concern... nothing better than a happy pagefile.

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Neither of these would be benefitial.

BrutalDrew said:

Neither of these would be benefitial.

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Why not? I have read theories that say differently... I'd like to hear your reasoning.

First of all just ignore all those misinforming "tweaking" guides. They are filled with false information such as tweaking related to the pagefile.

Pagefile IO's are never in buffers of more than 64 Kbytes at a time, and the seek time completely dominates the IO time. Putting any file on the outer cylinders only make a difference if you are transferring very long buffers. That is also why fragmentation of the pagefile means very little. You don't even need to worry about unless it is extremely fragmented.

Even then there are free tools to defragment the pagefile. Also if you set your initial high enough it will never have to expand thus not creating fragments. Even if it does the pagefile will be back to its initial state after a reboot.

So when sizing the pagefile it is best to set the initial 4x the amount of PF usage after using your most intesive applications such as a game. PF usage can be monitored through perfmon using the "%usage" counter. It is good to have the max at least 2x the number you just calculated. You could even set the max to as much free space you have on that partition.

Ignore poor advice such as disabling the pagefile and setting it a fixed value. Also some people even recommend putting the pagefile on a seperate partition, but on the same physical drive as the OS. This is a very bad idea as all it will do is increase seek times. If you have one drive the pagefile should be on the same partition as your OS and Apps. If you ahve two drives the pagefile should be on the most-used partition on the least-used HDD.

In Diskeeper 9 u can defrag/resize your M...M...whats it called? Master somehting something. I think u can also have your HD being defragged whenever it's fragged,(like when there is spare CPU) Not too sure on these though, I only used the trial a few times

jcw122 said:

In Diskeeper 9 u can defrag/resize your M...M...whats it called? Master somehting something. I think u can also have your HD being defragged whenever it's fragged,(like when there is spare CPU) Not too sure on these though, I only used the trial a few times

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It's called the Master File Table (MFT). Again this is also pretty much useless. Windows will automatically resize it as needed and fragmentation of it would not effect performance.

Having it run in the background just to defrag constantly is also pretty much useless.

Most of these feutures you read about for any defragger are just useless. They make it sound like it is benefitial, but it is not. O&O is the same with it's Complete/Name crap. There description of it is completely wrong too.

BrutalDrew said:

So when sizing the pagefile it is best to set the initial 4x the amount of PF usage after using your most intesive applications such as a game.

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that's insane and a waste of space for 99% of users out there imo.

Banyan said:

that's insane and a waste of space for 99% of users out there imo.

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Did you even read what he said? He didn't say it was to be static. He was referring to making it a dynamic page file.

Banyan said:

that's insane and a waste of space for 99% of users out there imo.

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How is that? It is best to have a high initial so it does not resize. Also with 1GB (the average on boards like this) of RAM the initial should be very small. Just do it yourself. Run your most intensive application and measure the PF usage using perfmon. The number would most likely still be pretty small after multiplied by 4.

so the general consensus is that if I already have DK 7, then DK 9 isn't worth the 50 bucks.

even so, there must be some small benefit from optimizing the pagefile... or do people write these tweaking guides just to hear themselves bark?

and what are these free tools available to defrag the pagefile? please enlighten me.

I been using DK8 for some time now. I very seldom use the startup[/ automatic features. My PATA drive still gives me very respectable times in seek and writes. Have I done all the goodies for tweaking the pagefile and other stuff recommended? Nopperz, I did when I first got the drive and lost the 54Mbps times I enjoy(fell to the average 30-40). I just use DK8 for defragging and once every so often I do a startup routine. I let Windows do the rest, it is built in anyways. That is that Idle thing you see in Task Manager. It will defrag your MFt for you, and optimize the boot sector. Windows may be bloated, but it does alot for you.

For moving or fiddling the pagefile. It is double edged. If your second physical drive is not accessed and it as fast or faster then it is a benifit. Otherwise you are spinning tires in mud.

Most folks find out disabling the PF will make Windows take over and you still have the PF. So no need to tweak that.

i used DK 9 - it was nice at first, but now it seems like a novelty and i show no performance increase or changes from using windows defrager.

I tried DK9 and it actually put files in my tempfolder that were hard to get rid of. Forgot to mention that in my post.

so the general consensus is that if I already have DK 7, then DK 9 isn't worth the 50 bucks.

even so, there must be some small benefit from optimizing the pagefile... or do people write these tweaking guides just to hear themselves bark?

and what are these free tools available to defrag the pagefile? please enlighten me.

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I have not used the new version to know what it is like compared ot the one you have (never tried that either), but from the feutures you mentioned it definitely would not be worth it since those two things will do nothing to help performance.

Also as for those people who actually write tweaking guides. I know they do try to help, but they have very little knowledge when it actually comes to the subject of what they are actually "tweaking" and end up just misinforming people. Some things you do hear about the pagefile are correct though. At some sites the author is smart enough to say not to disable the pagefile and just about every tweak guide says for best performance it is best to have the pagefile on a seperate drive. This is true. For best performance with twod rives you should have the pagefile on the least-used HDD and in the most-used partition.

The free tool I was speaking of to defrag the pagefile is PageDefrag. It is not really necessary though as once the pagefile is contiguous it will never become fragmented if the initial value is set high enough. With my sizing recommendation above it would be.

LOL,

For tweaking guides. I think of the argument of the QoS. That was the funniest Windows tweak; argument, ever.
Yeah some guides are for real and tell you it is somewhat worthy. Some tell you it is sliced bread. To really find out if you get benfit, do a real backup and try it for yourself. I did, and found out 90% of the Windows tweaks actually suck.

I am in a general agreement with Drew though.

The funniest tweaks IMO are IRQ#Priority and IoPageLockLimit. There is no code in the Windows XP that even looks at either one of these yet they are in just about every tweak guide on the net. Other tweaks on the net may actually do something, but they don't help performance and the people writing the guides really do not understand what they actually really do. These two tweaks do absolutely nothing at all.

I think most tweak place just copy the previous person and reword it with fancy impressive slang.

BrutalDrew said:

The funniest tweaks IMO are IRQ#Priority and IoPageLockLimit. There is no code in the Windows XP that even looks at either one of these yet they are in just about every tweak guide on the net.

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Very true, but how many folks were vocal how they got sooooo much more from it(i.e.- QoS)? Yeah, most the guides are a waste of bandwidth.

I tried the IRQ-P crap, and it made my overclock unstable in games. I guess the polling in the reg was bad. Not sure, but it is not worthy of a real tweak.

Ok, since no one has called my bluff and after further investigation of my DK7, I learned that the "features" I was inquiring about in DK9 are present in DK7 as well. I just didn't look that hard. Obviously I have not been using these features.

- "Reduce Paging File fragments"

- "Defragment the MFT"

Also has a feature known as Frag Guard that is probably just a waste and increased overhead, so I won't use it. But I will run the forementioned boot time operations manually every once in a while.

I use OO over Diskeeper ... and I only defrag the drive, I don't defrag the pf, MFT, etc.