Diskeeper 11 Released; Introduces ‘Instant Defrag’ and ‘Efficient Mode’

Solid-state storage may dominate the headlines more often than most HDD vendors would like, and TRIM may have negated the need for a proper defrag, but Diskeeper, with its “11” version, reminds us that our lowly mechanical drives are still prone to slowdown over time, whether at home, or in the enterprise. And, for all intents and purposes, it’s true, which is why I use it.

Diskeeper 2011 brings a couple of interesting things to the table, but one of the most important might be “Instant Defrag”. This feature works alongside Diskeeper’s “IntelliWrite” feature to make sure that data written to the disk is being written in such a way that defragging isn’t even going to be required. According to the company, upwards of 85% of data written to the disk can be optimized this way.

“Efficient Mode” is another useful feature for home users, as it works in such a way that it uses a minimal number of system resources, while at the same time prioritizing which data bits should be dealt with first. This would be perfect for a computer like an HTPC, where there is lots of storage, but you don’t want a defrag run to be noticeable while watching a film.

For those who just love to get into the nitty gritty of a disk status, Diskeeper 11 has also introduced performance reports. These can tell you about your system configuration, the improvement seen with read and write access, fragmentation improvements and even the number of I/Os saved from having an efficient defrag application in place.

Also in this version is HyperFast, the “SSD Optimizer” that the company unveiled just a couple of years ago. What this feature does is assure that data being written to the drive is done so in the most efficient manner possible, so as to avoid fragmentation while also reducing the number of writes to a given block, effectively increasing the lifespan of the drive. How entirely this differs from the garbage collection schemes on most SSDs, I’m not sure. I’m evaluating it, however, but from what Diskeeper tells me, HyperFast is more of a complement, if nothing else, to such technologies.

You can read more about the latest version below, and as I’m a rather avid user of the program, I’ll update my thoughts on the latest version after I have more time to spend with it.

Diskeeper® 2011 data performance software is the only solution that can proactively cure and prevent up to 85% of the fragmentation that causes PC slows and instantly defrag any remaining fragments so your PC stays fast, every minute of every day. Plus, it’s completely automatic so you don’t have to do a thing!