Preview: Diskeeper 2007 for Windows Home Server

I’m going to take you on a journey – to the future. Imagine life in a year’s time. July 2008. Your Windows Home Server has been in place running RTM since November, meticulously backing up your files on each of your PCs every night. It’s saved you already on a couple of occasions where files have been deleted accidentally and you’re already thinking of adding extra storage later in the year. All in all, your first year with Windows Home Server has been almost perfect.

Almost perfect.

There’s just one problem. You’ve noticed recently that it’s taking a little longer to access the files stored on your home server. When you first installed the server, file access was lightning fast – almost as if they were on the home computer you’re using to access them. But over time, as your collection of files has grown, things aren’t as snappy as they used to be.

The problem? Those hard disks you installed in your new home server have got fragmented. Over time, the files that were stored sequentially on your new installation are now split into fragments across the hard disk. Net result? Your server slows down as it takes longer for the disk heads to move between frqgments to access your files.

Want to get your server’s performance back? You’ve got to keep your hard disks defragmented, and Diskeeper 2007 for Winddows Home Server may be the answer.

Bill Gates announced a number of software partners for Windows Home Server at his WinHEC keynote in May, including Diskeeper. Diskeeper have been around for over 25 years, specialising in Disk Defragmentation software. Diskeeper 2007 is available for a wide range of Windows SKUs, including client and server options.

Diskeeper for Windows Home Server is currently being finalised, ready for launch later in the year – we managed to get hold of a pre-release version to check out. This version has the same functionality as the final WHS release, but uses its own window on the home server, rather than the Windows Home Server Console. The final release will snap in to the WHS Console so it can be managed from any of your home computers. Therefore expect the look and feel to look slightly different to the screenshots shown here.

So, Diskeeper 2007 – what’s it all about? In short, Diskeeper automatically keeps all of the hard disks (both internal and external) on your home server defragmented to optimise the speed and performance of the server. Unlike the standard Disk Defragmenter application included in Windows Home Server (and other Windows SKUs), Diskeeper runs as a service in WHS, and continually works on defragmenting your disks whilst the server is idle. Access the server, Diskeeper stops. Server idle? Diskeeper gets back to work so there’s no noticable performance hit whilst it’s running. They call it Invisitaksing.

Mangled English aside, it’s a great feature and ensures that your disks will be optimised without you having to organise a strict defragmentation regime as part of WHS ownership.

The second groovy feature in Diskeeper is called i-FAAST (Intelligent File Access Acceleration Sequencing Technology). Basically, the program keeps an eye on which files are most regularly accessed and organises your disk so that they can be accessed rapidly. According to the blurb, this can improve file access and creation up to 80% faster than when the server was first installed.

Okay, so what does it look like? (Bear in mind, the UI will change in the final release).

I installed the pre-release Diskeeper for WHS on my home server today, and having easily configured the system to automatically defragment my disks (2 x 500gb internal drives and 1 250 Gb external drive) in the installation wizard:

I was presented with the main Diskeeper dashboard (this will be replaced by the Windows Home Server Console) which showed each of my disks and a range of options to analyse and manually defragment each of them.

I took a look at each of my disks to see how fragmented they were. Bear in mind here that I reinstalled Windows Home Server this morning, so the main system partition was formatted clean. I was surprised to see that already each of the disks were heavily fragmented. As with the bundled Disk Defragmenter application in Windows Home Server (interestingly, based on Diskeeper) fragmentation of your disk is shown as a colour chart, with high performing files shown in blue, and low performing files in red.

A full report is available for each drive analysed, with a wealth of statistics including:

• the number of fragmented files on the disk
• average number of fragments per file
• time required to read fragmented files vs optimum
• time required to read all files vs optimum

and a whole lot more, stat-fans.

The dashboard allows a high-level of configurability, with the ability to include or exclude individual volumes, folders or files from defragmentation, changing from automatic to manual or scheduled defragmentation and clear recommendations and actions for each disk based on the analysis previously conducted.

Having left the server alone for a few minutes, I came back to find that Diskeeper had already been to work on the system drive in the idle time, and had eliminated almost 14000 fragments. All that red low performance had turned to blue high performance. Wahay!



In short, if you’re into granular disk managment, Diskeeper is for you! And if you’re not, (like me) the low-touch, automated defragmentation of your files provided with Diskeeper means that it’s a worthwhile investment for maintaining WHS disk performance behind the scenes.

Pricing and release date is still to be announced – hopefully, I’ll get a new build with the new WHS Console UI nearer release at which point, I’ll update this preview. I’m also hoping to arrange a time-bombed trial version of the software exclusively for you guys too, so you can test it out before purchasing. Watch this space.

But for now, Diskeeper looks like a really useful application for every WHS owner.