Hard drive life is extended and system stability and reliability are increased by Automatic disk defrag.

    Computerworld reported last week that Forrester Research Inc., lowered "its expectations for U.S. and global IT spending for the second time in less than two months." Numerous articles, that debate whether the US is in a recession, heading for a recession or just in the midst of a slowdown, offer suggestions to streamline IT budgets including employing virtualization and enacting spending freezes for new hardware and personal computers. Regardless of what the current economic downtrend is labeled, recent research confirms that IT managers are reducing spending; forcing the industry to employ innovative solutions to squeeze peak performance from existing machines like disk defragmenter software that has been proven to extend the life of hard drives and greatly increase efficiency in virtual machine environments.

    The disk of the hard drive spins around each time a file is accessed, sometimes as fast as 160 mph, in search of the file. Over time files become broken apart (fragmented) and placed in non-contiguous locations on the hard drive. As a result, the disk must work harder to find the files resulting in delays and excess wear and tear on the hard drive that can reduce the life of a hard drive.

    In the past, the solution to fragmented disk required IT managers to schedule system downtime to give the system ample time to complete the defragmentation process, which could easily take 8 hours or more. Although scheduled defrag on servers somewhat alleviated server slows, individual machines were rarely defragmented due to the arduous task of installing and setting defrag schedules on each machine, leaving them vulnerable to crashes, data loss and reduced hard drive life.

    Advanced disk defragmenter technology offers a solution to tight IT budgets by eliminating the need to schedule downtime because it automatically defragments hard drives in real time; reduces IT man hours spent troubleshooting system hangs, slows and crashes because automatic defragmentation restores and maintains system peak performance in real time; and, premium disk defragmenter developers, such as Diskeeper Corporation, offer administrator editions that can remotely install and manage defragmenter software such as Diskeeper 2008® with InvisiTasking™ to individual machines contributing to prolonged machine life.    

    Advanced automatic defragmentation software will become even more essential as the trend toward virtualization increases due to their symbiotic nature. Server virtualization consolidates systems to reduce management overhead and is a cost effective means for fewer, but more powerful hardware and the purpose of defragmentation is to consolidate file fragments into a single extent, increasing access speed, reducing free space fragments to a small handful of larger chunks.