PerfectDisk v6

PerfectDisk v 6

Reviewed by: Thomas V. Kappel, send e-mail
Published by: Raxco Software, go to the web site
Requires: Runs on Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000 Professional and server, Windows XP Home and Professional
MSRP: US$44.95 (single user license)

Perfect Disk Version 6 is a disk defragmenter and drive optimization product. It's designed to work in Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000 and Windows XP systems. It's available in workstation and server versions. Besides single pass defragmentation of files, it can do single pass and offline defragmentation of files, single pass consolidation of free space, network scheduling and management, large drive support, and boot time defragmentation as well. There are more features, of course, but any longer list will make this review sound like sales literature, which it's not. Raxco's Perfect Disk Defragmentation software has been reviewed by us before through many other versions of the program.

I believe in defragmentation of hard drives. I also believe all hard drives should be checked, cleaned, defragmented and hard drive space consolidated to keep your investment in top running order. This should not be a complicated or expensive deal. Unfortunately, companies and software developers can and do take programs and tasks and turn them into an information and feature overload process. PerfectDisk takes just about the right middle of the road process to provide the features and information most of us want.

Now I'm not going to give you a what-the-opening-screen looks like or how fast the program runs review. If you know anything about defragmenting programs you probably know roughly what the screen looks like and you also know that speed is relative to the size of your disk and how badly it's fragmented. Instead I'm going to give you some facts and opinions, of course, about the program.

The program loads easily, but there is no uninstall provided. You'll have to use the Windows process. I like it when an uninstall process is provided that does a clean job if I decide to unload.
The hard drive defragmentation information screen uses 13 different colors to display drive information and defragmentation progress status. This is more information than I usually want but some of you might like it.
What I didn't like was that the information screen is also a little hard to read and the boxes jump around on the screen. It doesn't work like the familiar viewing process in earlier Windows versions. The visual display did not provide me with a clear picture of what was happening to the hard drive.
The program can do multiple drives in your machine at the same time. Very nice!

Minor problems in PerfectDisk 200 have been fixed in v6:

For you technicians and information fanatics this program will be heaven for you. You get the following information when you print at the end of the process:

So, any more information about the program and I too run the risk of information overload in this review. The bottom line is that the program loads easily, runs fast, gives you more than enough information, is reasonably priced, and, for the big people, works in enterprise systems too.

Defragmentation programs are not something I get overly excited about. I want a tool that does what I want, takes a small bite from the nearly always-empty wallet, is somewhat easy to use, and doesn't get in my face when I install it and use it. Perfect Disk 6.0 meets these requirements and needs. Perhaps it will meet yours too. Check out their web site for the trial versions that are available.