PC Solutions

A computer is only as fast as its slowest component, and the disk is by far the slowest part of your computer. It is at least 100,000 times slower than your RAM (Random Access Memory) and over 2 million times slower than your CPU. When it comes to the speed of your PC, focus on disk performance first, before you opt for more memory or a faster CPU.

So what can be done to improve disk performance? Since fragmentation – the scattering or fragmenting of files on your hard drive from continually writing, deleting and resizing them – is a major cause of disk performance degradation, I would start here.

So what causes fragmentation and why is it hurting my hard disk performance?

By the very nature of the way the Windows® operating system stores data on the hard disk – by breaking files into pieces all around the disk in tens, hundreds, even thousands of pieces per file – your PC naturally accumulates fragmentation.

Read more about fragmentation and computer performance »

How do I keep my disk running at peak performance?

Since fragmentation is the primary cause of poor disk performance, anything that can be done to eliminate fragmentation is going to increase your disk performance.

One of the primary reasons fragmentation hurts disk performance is because your hard drive head has to go and retrieve each and every piece of a fragmented file before you can access it. This excessive and unnecessary disk activity causes slow PC performance.

There are essentially two ways to address fragmentation. You can wait until it happens, then use defrag (the act of putting fragmented files back together), or you can prevent the fragmentation before it ever has a chance to slow down your disk performance.

Reactive Solution

The first defragmentation solution is a reactive approach to fragmentation and provides a temporary solution to an on-going problem. Just because you defrag your PC, doesn’t mean the problem has been solved. The minute you finish running your defrag, your PC will once again start accumulating increasingly more fragmentation with each and every use, so you feel like you are fighting a losing battle.

It also means that your PC is wasting resources by first writing fragmented files to your hard drive, and then requiring the defrag engine (built-in or other defrag only solution) to go to work locating and consolidating your files so that they that they are contiguous. This reactive, after-the-fact approach to fragmentation still leaves you vulnerable to an unreliable and slow performing PC.

Proactive Solution

The second solution, fragmentation prevention, is proactive, providing a more complete solution that keeps your disk performing at optimum speeds at all times. Diskeeper® performance software combines the best of both worlds by automatically handling any fragmentation that is already hurting your disk performance, and combining that with IntelliWrite® fragmentation prevention technology that stops future fragmentation before it happens.

When your files are written to the disk contiguously (without fragmentation) rather than scattered across your disk, your PC doesn’t have to work as hard to read or write your files. Plus as an added bonus, the reduction in disk activity actually extends the life of your hard drive by an additional 1-3 years - saving you money in replacement costs.

Try Diskeeper for yourself for the absolute best disk performance possible.

"Diskeeper is one of those software packages that you install, configure and then forget about. To put it another way ... it works and that is good! Before I used Diskeeper my main problems were slow disk access and disk thrashing."

- Lee Ott

"Before we got Diskeeper, hard drive failure was commonplace. Hard drives last longer now."

- Omar Tapia

"Dramatically improves system performance while keeping the disk space optimized not chewed with little bits of data everywhere."

- Erik Madsen

Download a free trial of Diskeeper today »