This story appears in the
November 2000 issue of
Entrepreneur.
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PC hard drives have data written to them on spaces called
clusters that get reused after data is deleted. As files continue
to be deleted and spaces are reused, the data in files tends to get
scattered haphazardly in noncontiguous clusters. It's like
splitting up the chapters of a book and placing them in different
files throughout a file cabinet. Pretty soon, it takes longer to
access the information and put it all back together.
What to do? Defrag-that is, put all the data for each file
back into neat rows of contiguous clusters, which greatly improves
system performance. IDC recently released a white paper on the
subject titled "Disk Defragmentation for Windows
NT/2000." The subtitle, "Hidden Gold for the
Enterprise," points to the most relevant findings.
IDC's test results showed a 20 to 80 percent increase in
performance when hard drives of Windows NT systems were
defragmented and even higher gains for Windows 2000. The report
estimates that improved system performance from regular
defragmentation can extend the normal three-year life cycle of
workstations to five years.
While defrag tasks can be done at each computer, IDC warns,
"It is both impractical and cost-ineffective for IT support
groups to manually run defragmentation box by box across an
enterprise." The recommended alternative for networks large
and small is a network defragmentation program like Executive Software
International's Diskeeper or Raxco Software's
PerfectDisk 2000.
"The advantage of a network defragmentation solution is
that the scheduling, monitoring and controlling of defragmentation
tasks can be handled for an enterprise from one console," IDC
reports. Diskeeper costs $45 (street) per workstation and $250 per
NT server, while PerfectDisk 2000 runs $44 (street) per workstation
or $219 per server. Either program saves you money by helping you
avoid unnecessary hardware upgrades.