Diskeeper 8.0 Home Edition review: Diskeeper 8.0 Home Edition

Wonder why your system runs slower and slower each day? It may be hobbled by disk fragmentation, when individual files are broken into pieces and spread across a drive. Even though a defragmentation utility is included with Windows, few people take the time and trouble to defrag often enough. Welcome the set-it-and-forget-it technology of Executive Software's Diskeeper 8.0 ($29.95 Home Edition for Windows 95, 98, Me, and XP Home only, or $44.95 Professional Edition), which incrementally defrags your hard drive in the background, keeping your system running smoothly.

Diskeeper 8.0 installs easily with a standard Windows setup program. This new version of the software sports an improved interface that is easy to understand, with abundant in-context help and explanations. For instance, tabs at the bottom of the window, such as Performance, Reliability, and Fragmentation, explain issues about disk defragmentation and diagnose the current state of your drive. Helpful windows also pop up as you select each option in the software, explaining exactly what each option does and when it should be used.

Diskeeper can function like a standard manual defragmenter and can even defragment several drives or partitions simultaneously. However, instead of waiting until there's a problem to defrag, Diskeeper offers excellent tools for keeping your drives always performing at their best. The software can be set to run in the background at specific times or in certain situations. For instance, you can set it to run in screensaver mode; while the screensaver is on, the software defrags your drive, and the defrag process stops when you disable the screensaver.

The professional version offers boot-time defragmentation, consolidating the disk directory structure and defragmenting the Master File Table and the Windows paging file--tasks that the built-in Windows defragger can't accomplish. Diskeeper Professional can also be managed on a network via administrator software, a solution for companies that want to automate the process of defragmenting all of their PCs.