When I reinstalled my system last month, I bough a licence of diskeeper. I used the trial 30 gg in my laptop, and I really like its feature to automatically defragment the file system during Idle time.
Since trial time with laptop went good I decided to buy a licence and install diskeeper in my desktop system, and after some days of usage I noticed that it really slows up my wmware machines. When I started virtual machines I see in task manager the diskeeper service readings tons of data from the disk, and the PC gets really slow. I stopped the service for a couple of weeks, and wmware works as expected. Today I reactivated diskeeper to do a manual defragmentation. I started the service and let it analyze my C: disk (a RAID 1 array) diskeeper tolds me that the disk is average fragmented and suggested a manual defragmentation.
I started manual defragmentation and went to lunch. After 30 minutes I come back and logged in the pc and I realize that it is really really slow, even mouse pointer is slow, I fired task manager but then the pc completely hung. I look at my SATA card, and the led confirmed me that there isactivities on disk (it flashes about one time at a second), but the system was completely freezed, even mouse pointer is stuck, and CTRL+ALT+CANC does not work. After 5 minutes I had no choice….I did an hardware reboot.
When the system starts up one of my disk of the RAID 1 array was signaled as "degraded". Now I’m rebuilding the disk (such a length process), but the next step will be uninstalling diskeeper.
alk.
January 24th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
An alternative you might want to look at is PerfectDisk, which provides scheduling (as well as continuous defrag), which many find useful in virtual environment to avoid resource contention. PerfectDisk also completely consolidates free space.
And there is even a PerfectDisk for VMware, which handles both the guests and host, and also automates the VMware Shrink utility to recapture space.
Joe Abusamra
http://www.perfectdisk,com
www,perfectdiskblog.com
January 24th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
You are right, I used perfect disk in the past and it was really great, I think I’ll move again to Perfect Disk in the near future.
alk.
February 25th, 2009 at 3:57 pm
It is more likely that the failing disk in your RAID array caused your system slowness.
February 26th, 2009 at 2:29 am
The bad thing is that the disk was ok before running diskeeper, after rebuilding the array everything went ok again.
alk.
June 11th, 2009 at 7:21 pm
Diskeeper Corporation has created a vital component previously missing from virtualized environment productivity. V-locity with InvisiTasking® installs on both the Windows Server® 2008 OS that is running the virtual host and all Windows® virtual machines (guests). Each component optimizes its respective Windows OS and performs defragmentation of files and consolidation of free space. This minimizes unnecessary I/O passed from the OS to the disk subsystem and aligns data on the drives for optimal access.
With the proprietary InvisiTasking, V-locity will automatically and invisibly defragment files and consolidate free space on every Windows system it is installed, eliminating unnecessary and excess I/O to restore system performance and reliability for the entire platform. At the same time, V-locity provides a tool to analyze and compact wasted virtual disk space.
For additional information, contact V-locity@diskeeper.com.
http://www.diskeeper.com
September 15th, 2009 at 12:41 am
alkampfer, i had a similar experience. And until i started reading some posts on RAID failures from using Diskeeper, i was thinking that it was just a coincidence.
did you replace the degraded hd? or did you just rebuild your RAID and go on?
September 15th, 2009 at 2:44 am
I’ve rebuild the drive, but the system won’t boot, then recover the system and everything was ok.
Now I use a single 10k disk for my principal system, and a RAID0 with two 10k disk for secondary disk. I use Windows7 and it defrag both volumes at scheduled time, never had a problem in a couple of week.
I installed Diskeeper in my laptop, since I own a valid license and it goes very well.
Alk.
May 5th, 2010 at 12:09 am
Fantastic post, can I link to this from my blog?
thanks…