Diskeeper is one of most popular disk defragmentation utilities out there. However, with the conventional hard drives setting themselves up for a fall from grace, makers of disk utilities have to reinvent themselves.
At the same time, SSDs aren’t exactly the “silver bullet” of storage, since these drives are subject to slowdowns as the time goes by. This was especially visible with MLC drives, which can be pretty darn slow (depends what NAND controller is being used), and your expensive investment can turn into a headache. You can thank this to the fact that operating systems aren’t optimized for SSD technology – W7 will be the first operating system that brings specialized read/write techniques for the SSD drives.
Thanks to tireless newshound Jan Loncik, I learned that there is a solution to that in a form of software called HyperFast. Diskeeper Corporation released an advanced SSD optimization utility that uses proprietary algorithms to optimize reading and writing on the SSD. Just like InvisiTasking technology inside Diskeeper utility for hard drives, HyperFast uses similar optimization techniques to cache the often used space in available system memory and optimize positioning of the data on NAND chips.
HyperFast is doing nothing else but helping the Windows OS to access the data on the SSD as soon as possible. In order to prove their claims, they took 8GB SSD from entry-level netbooks (we’re talking about slowest possible SSD) and simulated real world scenario, compressing six months of usage. The claimed result is 5.9x faster reads, 19.5x faster writes, 3.9x faster random reads and 9x faster random writes.
Claimed improvements on el cheapo SSDs for netbooks...
We will keep the opinion for ourselves until we get the opportunity to benchmark the drive in real world scenario, using different SSDs. But for all of you SSD owners out there, there is a utility that could help you out… the price of HyperFast is 25 bucks if you want to buy Diskeeper 2009.
UPDATE JAN 28. 2009, 9:20 PM CET: As you can read from the comments, we have received some interesting comments from competing companies. For optimizing operation of Solid State Disk drives, you can also try following links: SSD Tweaker (project at SourceForge). You’re also welcomed to try a trial version of Perfect Disk 10 Professional.
Quite interesting indeed. So SSDs can actually benefit from free space consolidation/optimization that forces sequential writes.
An intel SSD engineer said pretty much the same thing in a recent interview (article at hardocp) when asked whether SSDs need to be defragmented. He said that while conventional defragging is not required for read performance, SSDs performance will benefit from optimization of data layout. Which is what Hyperfast seems to be doing.
Google provides an interesting link on hyperfast here
http://www.diskeeperblog.com/archives/2008/12/hyperfast_is_al.html
By: DanielT on January 28, 2009
at 14:18
Well, once that you make something, there is always ways how can you optimize the product. In case of SSDs, one very primitive way to enhance data transfer would be to put the most used data on chips that have shortest connection to the controller… even though it may sound crazy, it’s a start. It is just the matter of feasibility of putting all the additional effort in checking for shortest data paths…
It starts with that (or ends?), we can discuss numerous ideas on how to improve the speed of NAND flash… everything starts and stops with the memory controller (pretty much just like graphics cards).
In fact, if it would be interesting to see how would 3rd or 4th gen of Tegra chips handle SSD data..
By: theovalich on January 28, 2009
at 15:12
Yes, the key issue with SSDs is free space consolidation, which impacts writing to the drive. Complete free space consolidation is built into the PerfectDisk Professional defrag product (in use at Microsoft). While this paper is a bit outdated, it’s still relevant to the issue at hand. I would suggest all interested to evaluate both products…
http://www.perfectdisk.com/user_data/white_papers/pd2008_impactoffreespaceconsolidation.pdf
There’s a saying, “just because someone says something doesn’t make it true.” Similarly, just because someone charges an extra 25 bucks and says it’s special, doesn’t make it special.
And I don’t ask you to believe me, or even the paper. I do respectfully ask you to perform due diligence.
Joe Abusamra
Vice President of Operations
http://www.perfectdisk.com
http://www.perfectdiskblog.com
By: Joe Abusamra on January 28, 2009
at 17:04
Hi Joe,
thanks for your comment. Well, this article is a news piece about a utility that optimizes SSD operation. It is not a comparison between different or competing methods of disk optimization.
In fact, I’ll be more than happy to introduce you to storage experts at upcoming Bright Side of News website, and I don’t see why we would not have good launch article that compares different disk utilities using conventional hard drives.
All the best,
Theo
By: theovalich on January 28, 2009
at 17:32
Hi Theo,
Thanks for the feedback and we’d be happy to talk to your storage experts.
Regarding the comment, I perhaps wasn’t clear. PerfectDisk is a utility that optimizes SSD operation. SSD or non-SSD. My point was that because a “utility” has a special name and a special price does not necessarily make it “special.”
Again, I don’t ask you to believe me. I just want you to be aware that PerfectDisk is “a utility that optimizes SSD operation.” We currently have no plans to strip out our pioneering free space consolidation code and charge SSD users separately.
Thanks,
Joe
By: Joe Abusamra on January 28, 2009
at 17:49
I think whoever wrote this article should do more research before they discredit themselves.
Take a look at this:
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/diskeeper-ssd-defrag,6848.html
And then this:
http://digg.com/tech_news/Diskeeper_Accused_of_Scientology_Indoctrination
What sensibly person would even consider Diskeeper when there are much better alternatives.
For one, PerfectDisk has had free space consolidation for years and years, so they were prepared for SSD optimization long before Diskeeper. And now that SSD’s are out what does Diskeeper want to do? Charge you extra for a bogus feature that has been proven not to work.
Like I said, you discredit yourself when you don’t do your research.
By: Ginaz N. on January 28, 2009
at 18:59
There is only one author for this blog, and that’s me
First of all, I can’t wait to leave WordPress and their crappy mandatory SnapPreview (no, I won’t pay $15/year to get rid of that ad if I can’t put my own ads
)
Where were we… ah right. For starters, I don’t consider myself discredited, I wrote a piece of news based on scarce information that I found.
I received bits’n'pieces of information from Diskeeper. Based on that information, I wrote news about it. As simple as that.
Are other solutions out there? Yes they are. Expect an update to the story.
By: theovalich on January 28, 2009
at 21:11
To the VP of operations at perfectdisk. Okay, fine I know who you are attacking with your comments. But one thing I will say is that when I use Hyperfast to consolidate free space I notice in taskmanager that it reads a lot of data but it only ends up writing less than 100MB. Obviously it does this by recognizing the drive is an SSD and then changing its strategy to avoid wearing out the SSD.
Can you tell me if Perfectdisk 10 will do the same for me or is it going to start doing the same rearrangement of data it does on magnetic drives?
Just to be clear with magnetic drives Perfectdisk was always my choice of defrag over Diskeeper which I didn’t think was all that great.
I’d like to know what if any optimizations have been done to tailor the program to use on SSDs. Thank you.
By: SR on February 4, 2009
at 04:37
Hi SR,
The utility you are mentioning does not recognize a drive is SSD – you need to tell it so. And if you want, you could tell the utility that a magnetic drive is a SSD drive and it will do its thing.
You don’t need to use SMARTPlacement with PerfectDisk 10 – you can choose to consolidate free space (which will also defragment files). And that is what this other utility is doing – it’s consolidating free space.
We have not done anything specific for SSDs. As Ginaz points out above, PerfectDisk’s longstanding ability to consolidate free space had PerfectDisk prepared and best able to handle SSDs. No changes were required. This other is catch-up, but I will give it credit for some crafty marketing and even more bonus points for charging money for it. We are choosing not to charge extra for a capability we have had for years.
Thanks,
Joe
By: Joe Abusamra on February 4, 2009
at 14:02
Hi Joe,
Thanks for your response. I am currently trialing the other product and it did actually recognize my drive as an SSD automatically. It took me 10 minutes of searching where I get tell it before I realized it already disabled “features” that do not work or are not necessary on SSDs.
Anyway, I take it that I should just ask PerfectDisk to consolidate space and I’m set. I don’t find the other product’s interface to be all that helpful in telling me what’s really going on.
By: sr on February 6, 2009
at 06:13
That should be: “10 minutes of searching for where to tell it I have an SSD before…”
By: sr on February 6, 2009
at 06:17
Hi joe,
Diskeeper pretends and charges for what everybody these days known as Free Space Consolidation, and no doubt PerfectDisk is champion with the tests we performed, about the claim made by diskeeper for SSD drives,will it make any difference on SSD drives, i have doubts on it and its marketing gimmic and nothing else.
By: CSB on February 13, 2009
at 08:39
I don’t think Joe has entirely answered the question. I believe HyperFast doesn’t do file defragmentation, in order to avoid unnecessary wear on the SSD. It only does free space consolidation, which should result in less moving of data around. (And it may do some caching in main memory too.) But I have been a PerfectDisk user for many years, and insofar as I know merely disabling SmartPlacement does not prevent file defragmentation. Is that incorrect? Is there a way to do free space consolidation only in Perfect Disk?
By: Jim on February 19, 2009
at 08:10
Hi Jim,
That’s correct. When it consolidates free space, PerfectDisk will also defragment files (there is an option to consolidate free space without SMARTPlacement). So while that could be the result, one really needs to look at all the IOs being done, and also consider that typically, PerfectDisk will not run as much because its “job” is done.
Thanks,
Joe
By: Joe Abusamra on February 19, 2009
at 16:01
Super nice post. Keep more coming like this
By: SEO Support on June 22, 2009
at 16:59