Diskeeper Corp. today launched software that it says prevents up to 85% of hard drive fragmentation on Microsoft Windows systems, thereby improving performance and virtually eliminating the scheduled, automatic or manual task of defragmentation.
Diskeeper originally announced it would release Diskeeper 2010 in August.
The software uses a new technology called IntelliWrite, which optimizes file placement on disks to prevent fragmentation from occurring, thereby increasing read and write speeds, the company claimed. By curtailing the excessive I/Os associated with fragmentation, wear and tear on the drive should also be greatly reduced, resulting in extended hardware life.
Diskeeper 2010 also optimizes file access utilizing its I-FAAST technology. "Behind the scenes, free space is consolidated, further reducing the chances of future fragmentation, and the location of the most commonly used files is optimized for faster access. All of this occurs with zero impact on system resources," the company said in a statement.
Diskeeper, which is offering a free 30 day trial of its Diskeeper 2010 software, said its new product enhances enterprise network performance, as well, by eliminating the defragmentation process on servers and reducing energy consumption.
Joseph L. Marion, a principal at Healthcare Integration Strategies LLC, said he uses speech recognition technology for notes transcription and has noticed a big difference in system performance since using Diskeeper 2010.
"This is a major advantage for disk-intensive applications. The performance for achieving proactive fixes vs. reactive was very fast -- I noticed a significant shift within one day," he said in a statement.
David Yohn, the director of Marchi Thermal Systems in Redwood City, Calif., said that Diskeeper 2010 performs its functions much faster than earlier versions did, and the improved disk optimization translates into a faster system. "Every function seems faster, especially those that use large disk files like PhotoShop or AutoCAD," he said in a statement. "I was afraid that the IntelliWrite feature might become a system resource hog and slow performance, but the opposite is indeed the fact."