Given that hard drives use considerable energy, the theory was that fragmentation might cause a hard drive to expend more energy accessing fragmented files. The results of the tests were fairly substantial; a relatively heavily used workstation (a high-end system built with some of the most recent eco-friendly hardware) with only mild fragmentation could save 12% on power costs. Over the course of a 'business year' that equals over $20 USD. A conservative estimate for the average desktop or laptop, while probably more fragmented than the test case, can very likely save $10-$15+ in energy costs a year. Combined with the increased performance and reliability that defrag offers, you can save some green while being green.

The second paper goes in to details on how fragmentation applies to new storage technologies/systems. A few sections of this paper have been posted in the blog over the past few months, so some of it may be familiar.

Both papers are available on the Diskeeper Knowledge Center. The link is on the top left side of this page.

Diskeeper Corporation has worked closely with Microsoft to fully support Hyper-V from early on. That technology alliance includes the recent Microsoft announcement that Diskeeper was one of the first three software vendors to certify their software for Hyper-V (the other software vendors were IBM and Symantec). In the coming months it will culminate in advanced Diskeeper performance functionality announced by Microsoft several years back.

As a long time Microsoft Gold partner, we believe that Microsoft is providing an excellent option for corporation's looking to save power and space, ease provisioning efforts, and achieve full hardware utlilization through virtualization.

Also around the bend is the RTM for a new 2009 iteration of a Diskeeper software release - broadly available in late July/early August. Keep an eye open for the official release!

A question we get on occasion is what the two bar graphs in the Access Time section represent. The graph labels tell you what is measured, Fragmented Files or All Files, but how does this relate to performance?

The first graph is probably best viewed as a "Worst Case" scenario. That graph shows how long it takes to access all the fragmented files, and only those fragmented files. As you can imagine that probably almost never happens. One case where this might apply is a database volume that contains only those small handful of potentially all-fragmented database files.

The second graph shows how long it takes to read all the files on the volume, both fragmented and contiguous. This is likely closer to a "Best Case" scenario. Unlike the Worst Case scenario, this has a bit more real-world applicability. One such example is running an anti-virus/spyware scan or a volume file backup, as those processes read the entire volume.

Typically you'll find a performance gain somewhere in between the two graphs. As fragmentation affects the files you use (read/write/delete) you will likely be accessing/writing a good percentage of fragmented files, relative to all the files on a volume.

Keep in mind that the Access Times are good general indicators, but aren't designed to watch exactly how you (or your users) use the PC/Server.

"Diskeeper Corporation has come to China to help businesses, educational institutions and governments achieve their goals. Our Diskeeper product will restore all organizational computers to like-new performance, make them more reliable and extend their useful lives one to two years. Yet the return on investment for a Diskeeper purchase is measured in weeks, not months. With millions of customers worldwide and an Asian distribution network already in place, we have opened a representative office in Hong Kong to ensure the very best service to our customers throughout the greater China region." - Craig Jensen, Chairman and Founder, Diskeeper Corporation

During the opening ceremony, General Manager of Diskeeper Corporation China Limited, Mr. Lawrence Cheung said, "It is a milestone for Diskeeper Corporation to expand the market of Diskeeper and develop the company's core strength of defragmentation software, particularly in the burgeoning market of China."

The company marked its official opening by organizing a Grand Opening celebration at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel.

The event was attended by CEO, Diskeeper Corporation, Lisa Terrenzi, officials from Invest HK, and the company's management and employees among many other invitees.

Diskeeper Corporation China Limited:
21st Floor, ICBC Tower, Citibank Plaza
No. 3 Garden Road, Central, Hong Kong
Tel: 852-2273-5146
Fax: 852-2273-5999
Web: www.diskeeper.com

More recently, the NTFS file system added and fully supports disk/file encryption as evidenced by EFS (Encrypting File System), and Microsoft products such as Windows Bit Locker.

It is fairly well known that Windows also ships with a native defragmenter (a product initially provided by Diskeeper for the Windows 2000 platform). It then stands to reason that Microsoft has a vested interest in maintaining continuing compatibility with defragmentation and, minimally, their own drive/file encryption solutions, and this is certainly the case.

Over the years our vast install base (10 million+) has brought to our attention rare and temporary incompatibilities that other products have had with the Microsoft MoveFile API.

Disk Encryption is becoming and increasingly more popular security measure undertaken in corporate enterprise - and even home use. Limitations in Windows provided tools, often drives IT professionals to seek out advanced third party disk encryption solutions (much as they do with disk defragmentation). In past years, as this technology grew from infancy in the Windows arena, a few disk encryption applications had temporary issues with the MoveFile API.

In every case to date, where it has ever even been an issue, the manufacturer of that Encryption software program has recognized this issue and corrected it, or offered workarounds. Those workarounds may require specific functionality in a third party defragmenter such as Diskeeper's File Exclusion feature, as the native defragmenter that ships with Windows lacks this. In those cases, depending on the technology implemented by the Encryption software vendor, a specific file (called a boot loader file) should not be moved.

In fact, with Diskeeper's technology and market leadership, we have worked closely with engineers and support staff from Encryption manufactures to ensure their products work perfectly for our customers.

For any current or future Diskeeper Corporation customers looking to employ a disk encryption program, we recommend checking the Encryption ISV's (Independent Software Vendors) Knowledge Base, Help files, or directly contacting the support staff to determine if any special measures are necessary. Based on our experience we also recommend choosing a mature and established vendor in this arena - sound advice for any company looking to deploy a large volume of licenses of any application. As always, you should make sure you are using the most recent version for any encryption solution, such as Guardian Edge EPHD 7.2, Utimaco (SafeGuard Easy) 4.20.x - 4.40.2 with their hotfix SGEflt.sys, or PointSec 6.3.1.

In summary, there are no known issues with running both disk encryption software and disk defragmentation software. Combining Diskeeper and data encryption software with provide users with a secure and optimized computing experience.

To start the sign-up process, please email qtesting@diskeeper.com, and provide your contact information (name, phone, email address) as well as how many Servers you will be able to test on.

This final test phase will be starting in the next few days, so please act quickly if you'd like to participate. Your help is appreciated!

Derek explains how fragmentation is becoming increasingly vital to maintaining technology already in use (antivirus scans and backup), and to adopting new disruptive technology.

If you're interested, check out the interview here.

PS: Keep a look out for new technology in Diskeeper later this year, on these specific topics.

"Being a long term user (since the offering of Diskeeper as the ONLY product able to defrag Server NTFS partitions back in NT4) I have had significant experience with Diskeeper. While the driving factor for our purchase of Diskeeper was the name recognition and reliability of the product, much to my surprise (and total glee!) Diskeeper is as revolutionary today, as it was in my past. With the addition of automation (instead of scheduled defrags, it now does it on the fly) Diskeeper has repositioned the bar...again.

After the first 2 months of allowing Diskeeper to do its job, I no longer had to manually defrag - it was done! I now get every action item scheduled for that maintenance window completed, with time to spare! If NOTHING else, anyone who maintains an aggressive server maintenance program will reap big rewards in the time saved over this process alone... "

Paul Parker
Houston, TX

If you need to install the update to multiple computers, you can download the software from here.

Here is a list of main changes in build 12.0.781:

1. Fixed a flaw that caused a minor error message when the Diskeeper Service was shutdown (e.g. when shutting down the system). This error did not stop Diskeeper from functioning. (introduced in build 770)
2. Improvement to I-FAAST to better process files in the same folder, that are frequently deleted and recreated under the same file name.
3. Included support for correctly processing wildcards in the Diskeeper file exclusion list. Also fixed a couple of minor bugs related to file exclusion list.
4. Made enhancements to the News and Information feature to send info more appropriate to the user's location and the product edition used.
5. Removed displaying an error message when News and Information feature is unable to connect to a Diskeeper News Server. A message is now logged in the Event Log when this occurs. (introduced in build 770). This error did not stop Diskeeper from functioning.
6. Boot-time defragmentation is disabled in Windows Vista SP1 and Windows 2008, due to a feature incompatibility on those operating systems / service packs. A correction in a future update will re-enable the feature.

Here is a list of main changes in build 12.0.770:

1. Full feature support for Windows Server 2008. Note the previous builds of Diskeeper already installed on Server 2008 but did not include Bootime defragmentation.

2. Changes have been made to improve the logic (the new Smart Defrag of v2008) that determines when Diskeeper should run it's "extreme defrag" engine (low free space or severe fragmentation). Previously the volume had to be really badly fragmented AND extremely low on free space. In other words there was a middle ground where DK might not provide expect results. Now Diskeeper will detect if its other defrag engines aren't doing well enough and then, if needed, run this powerful new engine.

3. Fixed the problem with the Volume Map for volumes larger than 8TB and a cluster size of 4KB. It is now displayed correctly.

4. Fixed the problem with running on clustered servers where Diskeeper would lose volume settings after one of the nodes was shut down.

5. Microsoft Logo Certification for Windows Vista (Diskeeper 2008 Professional) and Windows Server 2008 (Diskeeper 2008 Server).

6. Fixed several other minor bugs.

7. Diskeeper News and Information feature added.

"It's the first ThinkPad since the mid-'90s that I actually think is sexy," he added. "Thinkpads are known as solid products, but not really for being sexy. It's just very thin, very light. It's kind of a technology showcase. This thing has all the bells and whistles that you could possibly aspire to in a notebook."

I can't say that I've ever heard that adjective used to describe computer hardware, but hey, to each his own :-).

Weighing in at under 3 lbs. it sports a 64GB Solid State Disk. To keep that SSD in top form, Lenovo chose to include Diskeeper software as part of the pre-install. Lenovo testing showed that only Diskeeper, with some special changes, could keep that SSD optimized.

Find the full system specs here.

I'm just wondering - does that qualify Diskeeper as "sexy software"?

After the Steve Ballmer keynote ends (10:15-ish), the partner exhibits will be open. We are located near the food court on table top #68. In addition to trialware CDs with a new update release, we'll be handing out free "Put More Fervor in Your Server" t-shirts.

MS08-003: Vulnerability in Active Directory Could Allow Denial of Service (946538)
Severity: Important

MS08-004: Vulnerability in Windows TCP/IP Could Allow Denial of Service (946456)
Severity: Important

MS08-005: Vulnerability in Internet Information Services Could Allow Elevation of Privilege (942831)
Severity: Important

MS08-006: Vulnerability in Internet Information Services Could Allow Remote Code Execution (942830)
Severity: Important

MS08-007: Vulnerability in WebDAV Mini-Redirector Could Allow Remote Code Execution (946026)
Severity: Critical

MS08-008: Vulnerability in OLE Automation Could Allow Remote Code Execution (947890)
Severity: Critical

MS08-009: Vulnerability in Microsoft Word Could Allow Remote Code Execution (947077)
Severity: Critical

MS08-010: Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer (944533)
Severity: Critical

MS08-011: Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Works File Converter Could Allow Remote Code Execution (947081)
Severity: Important

MS08-012: Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office Publisher Could Allow Remote Code Execution (947085)
Severity: Critical

MS08-013: Vulnerability in Microsoft Office Could Allow Remote Code Execution (947108)
Severity: Critical

You can find it here, in an PDF version of our normally printed Business Customer newsletter - Newskeeper.

The article is titled Diskeeper 2008, Under the Hood.

To continue expansion we are opening a Diskeeper office in Hong Kong a few months from now. The purpose of this office is to support our existing partners, as well as offering local technical support to new and existing customers in those areas.

If you live in Hong Kong or are willing to relocate, and are interested in career opportunities with the World's leading disk performance manufacturer, we have some great career opportunities available. Several positions have already been filled, but we still have openings for a Marketing Manager and a Technical Support Specialist.

Find out more here.