I have been using Diskeeper for several years now. I had upgraded to the '06 version when it was available. It worked well even in the background and I must admit that I had never had any trouble with it. Recently Diskeeper began sending me some notices that the '09 full version was available for a free download. Instead of taking advantage of this free download I purchased the '09 Professional Full Version. I saved this new download on one of my jump drives. I ran the '06 version to defrag the hard drive after having cleaned off all the unwanted files on it. Then I ran the newly installed '09 version just to see what would happen and if I had made the right decision to upgrade. Well it took Diskeeper about 25 minutes to fix all the things that the '06 version had missed. When the Performance screen came up, it reflected half of the files on the hard drive as being in a state of low performing. As I watched with interest what Diskeeper was doing it corrected all the fragments and now I have a solid blue ribbon on the Performance screen. So it is suggested that all of you who read this posting download the '09 Professional full version. You will not regret it.
As far as I'm aware, the "low performing" areas were fragmentation of the NTFS MFT. I once trialled version 9, and for some reason, that product wouldn't touch those areas - not even with a boot time defrag - yet it identified it as "low performing". Doesn't it sound kind of bogus? I scrapped it and downloaded Perfect disk 7, which cleaned it right up with a boot time defrag.
Dave: You may have downloaded the home version only. I downloaded the Professional Full Version. There is quite a difference between the two. Before I downloaded anything from Diskeeper, I read what the difference was between the two versions; the home vs the professional. There is quite a difference and there are 31 megs more in the professional version that that of the home one. However, if you did try the Professional Full Version and it did not perform for you, then something else occurred in your system than mine. I have installed on both of my terminals in the office here WindowsXP Professional versions as operating systems. There is a marked difference between the home and professional versions of those operating systems too; I have used both and I like the professional versions much better. VEETZ...
You may be right, I don't remember the version. The surprising thing was, even though the interface warned about "low performing areas" I couldn't find out what it meant anywhere. It was neither mentioned in the products Help, nor could I find an answer on the Internet - only other users trying to figure out what it meant. It was only after I installed Perfect Disk and ran the analysis, that I realized what those areas were. That's why many users think of marketing snake-oil, when Executive Software makes it's claims. I would never buy their product, based on this experience alone.
Dave: Your conclusions are quite accurate regarding what some of these programmers put out on the market. I fell for all of their schemes many years ago but once bitten, twice shy. I once had a programmer call me up and beg me to try OmniPage for ninety days free. I turned him down and hung up the phone. If you want to learn what low performing files are, simply bring up the DISKEEPER WebSite and bring up the explanation for the term. In the meantime I will bring up Perfect Disk and look over what it does and compare it with DISKEEPER Professional. VEETZ...