Concerns about Diskeeper 2008 Automatic Defrag

[drstanleyd2san]

Diskeeper 2008 defrags in the background at all times by default, and I was wondering if this is safe? This does not seem too safe to me because wouldn't a sudden crash or power outage cause file corruption? There is no way they can program the software to get around that right?

 

[htoonthura]

Diskeeper 2008 defrags in the background at all times by default, and I was wondering if this is safe? This does not seem too safe to me because wouldn't a sudden crash or power outage cause file corruption? There is no way they can program the software to get around that right?

With or without diskeeper running in the background, your system will experience some sort of stress if your system is not properly shut down due to power failure. In short, the problem does not lie in diskeeper but in power outage.

 

[apache_lives]

Diskeeper 2008 defrags in the background at all times by default, and I was wondering if this is safe? This does not seem too safe to me because wouldn't a sudden crash or power outage cause file corruption? There is no way they can program the software to get around that right?

Cant escape that regardless, on the other hand i got a cheap Belkin UPS that will last ~30 minutes so its plenty sufficent for brownouts and power spikes etc.

On the other hand, once the hdd is clean the in order it doesnt have much to do so it wont move as much around.

 

[rezolution]

Diskeeper 2008 defrags in real-time using idle resources, but it does not defrag continuously in the background 24x7. After it has finished defragging the drive completely the first time around, it usually runs for only a few minutes a day ...usually less than 5 mins on my drives to clear up the few remaining fragments.

Power loss during Diskeeper auto defrag is no more 'risky' than that during a manual defrag with the XP/Vista defragger.

The risk of data corruption due to power loss exists at all times, that's why important PCs always need to be connected to a UPS. If you pull the plug when Windows itself is writing to the MFT, there is a high chance that corruption will occur regardless of whether any defragger/program is in operation or not.

 

[NoEnglishUsernamesLeftToChoose]

As I understand it, a defrag application will copy the data for however long it takes, but the place which tells the PC where the data is to be found is left pointing to the original data until the copying is finished.

Then there is a very small period when the place which tells the PC where the data is to be found is changed to point to the new location. A power outage or other problem is very unlikely to occur during that final update. So risk is vanishingly small, even when you are defragmenting often.