August 28, 2008

Field Testers Needed - Solid State Drive Optimization

Diskeeper Corporation has made a few hints at the need for optimization technology for NAND Flash drives for some time. We now have a particular iteration of that technology completed and need help testing it. We're looking for current Diskeeper customers interested in a first peek. To test this technology you will need to sign a non-disclosure agreement and be able to test on a Solid State Drive.

If participating in these pre-release quality tests is of interest to you (it will really help us out) please email our Quality Control group at qtesting@diskeeper.com. Please add "SSD Tester" in the subject line and also let them know, in the body of the email, what operating system(s) you will be able to test on.

We expect the field test to start early next week and run for 1-2 weeks, so act quickly if you want to participate.

PS: We also have a white paper on the subject (testing done by 3D Professor) that we'll publish in September.

Posted by Michael at 09:25 PM | Comments (2)

August 27, 2008

Can you wipe an entire drive with SecureDelete 2.0?

This has been a popular question this past week, since the release of Undelete 2009.

Here's the full Q&A on the subject:

Can you wipe an entire drive with SecureDelete 2.0? In other words, you plan to give the computer away, say as a donation, but want NONE of your former data on it. So can you wipe the entire drive clean? Not just the free space?

Yes, Undelete's new SecureDelete 2.0 supports this. Here's how:

First, you'll need to delete remove all the files off the drive you intend to wipe of data - a quick reformat* is a fast way to do this. Then you can use the Wipe Free Space feature of SecureDelete. If you want the wiping process to complete quickly, I recommend launching this manually as it will complete faster than the Automatic mode, which will is designed to operate invisibly using only unused system resources (via InvisiTasking). Note that wiping can be a time consuming process as every single cluster has to be "scrubbed". The good thing is that you can walk away once you start it, no need to babysit.

*Of course to reformat or delete all the files off the drive, it cannot be your system drive, so you'll have to attach the drive to be wiped to a computer that has a working operating system and Undelete 2009 installed.

Posted by Michael at 12:01 AM | Comments (0)

August 19, 2008

Undelete 2009 is now available!

Undelete 2009 (6.0) has just been released. Here is a list of new and principal features. For more information, go to Undelete.com.

NEW! InvisiTasking technology - enables Undelete tasks to operate in the background with zero overhead.

NEW! SecureDelete 2.0 - provides the option to SecureDelete all files immediately rather than waiting for the Recovery Bin to be purged.

NEW! Wipe Free Space - overwrites any free space on the selected volume making it impossible to recover any files that previously occupied the now unused disk space. (note, not available on Windows 2000 systems)

NEW! Automatic Resizing of the Recovery Bin - automatically detect and reduce the size of the Recovery Bin based on available free space.

NEW! Support for 64 bit operating systems (except for Undelete Home edition).

NEW! Support for Windows Server 2008 operating systems (with Undelete Server edition).

NEW! Undelete 2009 Server edition now includes 10 Desktop Client Devices.

NEW! Improved performance on high traffic systems (e.g. busy file servers).

NEW! No reboot required for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 operating systems

Recovery Bin - captures and protects all deleted files (from: applications, command line, across the network). Using an "Explorer-like" window, clients/administrators can view deleted files and folders and instantly recover data.

Search Recovery Bin - search by location, file type, date created or deleted, as well as by file owner or the user who actually deleted the file.

Version Protection for Microsoft Office Files - "rollback" to an earlier version of a file. Version Protection automatically protects Word, Excel and PowerPoint files for all versions of Office. You recover previous versions in an intuitive Explorer-like window.

Emergency Undelete - Recover files deleted prior to installing Undelete 2009.

Remote Installation - "PushInstall" in Undelete 2009 Server edition allows system administrators to remotely install licensed Undelete 2009 software across the network.

Posted by Michael at 06:18 PM | Comments (0)

August 14, 2008

It's not a bug, it's a feature!

Anyone ever heard a software engineer tell that story?

Oddly enough, fragmentation was actually introduced to solve a major problem.

In the slim chance ;-) you are actually interested as to why fragmentation was "invented", you can check out these couple of pages. The e-book is old, but accurate.

Posted by Michael at 01:10 AM | Comments (0)

July 31, 2008

Field Testers Needed - New Diskeeper Boot-time Defrag

We have a new version of the Diskeeper Boot-time defragmenter very close to release. We're looking for some current Diskeeper 2008 customers interested in testing this new "defrag engine". We spent significant time and energy re-designing this feature from the ground up, and are excited with the results we've seen in our internal testing.

If participating in these pre-release quality tests is of interest to you (it will really help us out and speed up getting this update officially released to everyone) please email our Quality Control group at qtesting@diskeeper.com. Please add "Boot-time Defrag Tester" in the subject line and also let them know, in the body of the email, what operating system(s) you will be able to test on.

We expect the field test to start early next week and run for 1-2 weeks, so act quickly if you want to participate.

Posted by Michael at 06:16 PM | Comments (9)

July 07, 2008

Recession-proof software?

Diskeeper is an interesting software product in the variety of benefits that it provides users. Corporations purchase Diskeeper for any number of reasons; better performance, improved reliability, reduce help desk calls, etc...

When companies are prosperous and want to take all measures to get every drop of performance out of their systems, they look to Diskeeper. When companies are looking to cut costs and make the best use of existing assets (i.e. keep hardware in use for a longer period of time) they can again look to Diskeeper. Due to the various benefits, it could be called 'recession-proof' software.

For all the talk/speculation of an economic downturn in many parts of the world, Diskeeper Corporation continues to grow and is ahead of pace for another record setting year. We attribute that success, in large part, to the software's ability to help out companies experiencing lean times, by saving them energy, lengthening their PC life cycle by 6 months or a year, and facilitating initiatives to virtualize servers and desktops.

Posted by Michael at 06:07 PM | Comments (0)

July 04, 2008

Go Green and Save Some Green - with Diskeeper

We recently released two new white papers. One paper was the result of a very interesting experiment (carried out by 3D Professor - an independant software/hardware testing group).

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.

Posted by Michael at 01:28 PM | Comments (0)

July 01, 2008

Up Around the Bend

Microsoft is around the corner from an exciting new release, perhaps as compelling as Windows Server 2008 itself - the contender to VMware's hypervisor dominance (ESX). Hyper-V (a Windows Server 2008 server role) has wrapped up and is ready to go to market (RTM - or Release To Manufacturing).

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!

Posted by Michael at 12:28 AM | Comments (0)

June 09, 2008

Access Time Graphs in the Diskeeper Analysis

After running a manual analysis, Diskeeper will open a new window with two tabs. The first is the Volume Map display and will show a visual depiction of File Performance or File Structure. The second tab provides the detailed data. It is separated into numerous sections; Recommendations, Health, Access Time, Statistics and Most Fragmented Files.

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.

Posted by Michael at 06:51 PM | Comments (1)