Diskeeper Home Edition 9.0

Diskeeper Home Edition is a program, which defragments your hard disk. A Windows service is started when you install it, which automatically checks the files and folders on your hard disk so they won't be fragmented. These checks can also be scheduled by the user. This feature of the program is called "Set It and Forget It". Over time, fragmentation may affect your files, unless you have a defragmentation utility like Diskeeper running in the background.

The user interface is very simple to use. On the left side of the user's interface, you have shortcuts for any task that you perform. You can analyze each hard disk volume (drive). Once the analysis is complete, the program will display a nice looking graph, showing (in percentage) what the performance boost should be after using Diskeeper. In my experience, I've seen that you shouldn't expect a big performance boost after running a defragmentation utility. So I don't agree with the words of the publisher: "The remedy for a slow PC is NOT to get rid of it and buy a new one". On the other hand, it's a good idea to run Diskeeper on an old computer because it may improve its performance.

Diskeeper is one of the best defragmenting utilities I've seen. Besides being easy to use, it supports boot-time defragmentation, Master File Table (MFT) defrag, and defragmenting your page file. Power management is also built into the program, automatically stopping the background defragmentation process when running on batteries.

Pluses: It's possible to save or print a fragmentation report about each of your drives. You can also see on your hard disk what files are the most fragmented. Another nice feature is setting the priority level of the application, enabling you to continue working on your system while defragmentation is in progress.

Drawbacks / flaws: When I tried to defragment the hard disk drive on which Windows is installed, the program showed an error and triggered a system restart after 60 seconds. My operating system is Windows XP Service Pack 2.

In conclusion: This is a good tool for defragmenting your files and folders. It can do its job in the background, allowing you to keep your files defragmented.

version reviewed: 9.0.511.0