O&O Defrag V6 White Paper

Sandro Villinger(MVP for Windows Shell/User)

Table of contents (Administrators/professionals)

Introduction

About the company O&O Software 1The focus of this whitepaper 1Facts about the author, Sandro Villinger 1

Main part

Behind-the-scenes of the phenomenon "fragmentation" 2Microsoft's integrated defragmentation solutions 3O&O Defrag V6 - The goal of O&O Software 4O&O Defrag V6 methods - Going into details 5Breaking the speed limit with "Stealth" 5Perfect order: The "Space" optimization 5System partition's best way to gain performance: "COMPLETE/Name" 5"COMPLETE/Modified" - Reliable server optimization 5"COMPLETE/Access" - The all-rounder 5Now which methods should be used on what drive and in which order? 6O&O Defrag V6 - Technology overview" 7Activity Guard Pro 7Job management 7Sequential/parallel defragmentation with O&O Defrag V6 7Boot-Time/Offline-defragmentation 8Advanced Report Engine (ARE) 9Overview of O&O Defrag V6´s additional features 9Benchmarks and comparison 10Maximum fragmentation - the test environment 10Executive Software Diskeeper 8.0 13Benchmark results 14Benchmark - The bottom line 17

Conclusion

Short facts 18

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About the company O&O Software

Since 1997 O&O Software, located in Berlin,has been developing solutions for companiesand customers. The first version of today'sflagship ,"O&O Defrag V6", came out in 1998and subsequently won recognition with a widerange of awards for its developers. In 2002 theinternational launch brilliantly succeeded,enlarging the number of regular customers andraising the German company to a worldwideposition competitive with the former marketleaders.

The current version, O&O Defrag V6, which isthe subject of this whitepaper, shows early pro-mise both in sales and in the number of positi-ve reviews. More than one million copies ofO&O Defrag V6 are in use worldwide not onlyin the professional infrastructures of compa-nies but also in the consumer market.

The focus of this whitepaper

This whitepaper describes the product O&ODefrag V6 together with all its special functi-ons, including the underlying technology andits affect on your work environment. You'lleven learn more about the achievement ofO&O Defrag V6 or alternate products and gainan insight into (de)fragmentation theory.

Facts about the author, Sandro Villinger

Webmaster/project director of the established Windows-support portal "Windows-Tweaks.info" (founded in 2001).Since 2002 author of the professional magazine PC-Praxis (published by Data Becker) and additional publications in printing media.Received the Microsoft MVP certification (Most Valuable Professional for Windows-Shell/User). “Behind-the-scenes of the phenomenon “fragmentation” ”.

A hard disk (HD) is made out of mechanicalcomponents: Multiple rotating discs, situated ina stack one on top of the other and which arepowered through a spindle. A secondary motoris responsible for the movement of the writeand read heads. Before the data is able to makeits way over the IDE-/SCSI-bus to the CPU-/RAM-/mainboard combination, thousands ofprocessor cycles pass - thus the hard drive is acritical element for the speed or economic effi-ciency. Additionally, because it forms a bottlen-eck, the hard drive and its access times becomea major determinant of the computer's effecti-ve output. Precious time is lost before the bits& bytes are read and processed by the CPU, soit is clearly highly desirable for business successto keep this lost-time factor as small as possi-ble.So the task of computer performance enhance-ment consists of more than merely enhancingmemory management, setting faster RAMcycles (CAS), changing CPU priorities or buy-ing new hardware, since these common choicesignore one crucial factor, i.e. the optimizationof a hard drive's maximum performance byminimizing access times. The "Fragmentation"phenomenon acts as a brake on this optimizati-on and leads to a less-than-optimal computersystem.An installed application is theoretically locatedcoherently on the HD by the NTFS-/FAT filesystem. In reality, the data on hard drives areseparated as a result of the dozens of installa-tions, deinstallations, and reinstallations, filereplacements, deletions and copies. Separatedgaps of clusters, which are filled randomly byfurther installations, occur with increasing fre-quency as a hard drive is used over time. So, asan example, it is possible to have four gaps witheach of them having the size of, say, 8 MB, 56MB, 98 MB and 12 MB -- Programs or/anddata are located between and among thosegaps, so the assembly of needed data or pro-gram components requires the computer to

search among locations that are widely and ran-domly separated from each other. Now imagi-ne a new installation (Size 210 MB) is broughtinto play, filling these gaps. The data is writtenonto the disk disarranged in a catch-as-catch-can fashion, wherever there is a gap from aprior deinstallation or deletion. The conse-quences are foreseeable:The write/read head jumps tediously amongthe gaps to get the data and this, simply causedby escalating fragmentation, results in a massi-ve loss of time. It is shocking to see this phe-nomenon underestimated and neglected; in arecent analysis of a company's network (13clients), eight completely fragmented workstati-ons were recorded. According to the users, theremaining five workstations were maintainedusing the built-in defragmentation solution ofWindows XP Professional: Unfortunately, theresult of this seemingly non-cost solution wasshown by a hardly arranged hard disk, on whichcompletely scattered program and OS datawere found. Alarmingly, our real life test pro-ved such an intense fragmentation to be a con-siderable loss of performance, slowing down afast 1.6 GHz computer to a 900 MHz machine:Violent delays in terms of loading an applicati-on or while performing permanent file operati-ons within a program are the consequences.But time losses and performance decrementare not the only results caused by fragmentedhard drives. As soon as a data file gets "tornapart" and allocated onto several clusters, unfo-reseen stability problems emerge: STOP-errors,freezes or longer system pauses, which maylead to crashes. The system looses its integritybit by bit. But this is only the tip of the iceberg,since a head jumping continuously here andthere wears out as fast as the rest of the mecha-nical components: This raises the spectre ofpotential loss of data.Windows NT 4.0 even lets a fragmented harddrive be the cause of boot up problems. TheNTFS loads the NTLDR into the computermemory in order to launch the operating

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Behind-the-scenes of the phenomenon "fragmentation"

system - now if the MFT (Master File Table)shows a certain degree of fragmentation, thiscritical boot file may slip behind the hard diskarea, which is only accessible via BIOS until theNTFS-driver (ntfs.sys) is loaded. Since thesystem is not able to find the NTLDR (theboot loader for Windows NT based OS - itconsists of the file "ntldr" itself and the"boot.ini") when this special fragmented cir-cumstance is present, the boot up processaborts. Contrary to all rumours this only hap-pens with Windows NT; Windows 2000/XPavoid such an error scenario from happeningthrough a safety redundancy built into thesystem through an independent arrangement ofthose files (e.g. prefetches). Administrators sel-dom recognize this fragmentation problem as asource of trouble and instead needlessly per-form intense hardware tests and institute alter-native possible solutions, contacting support-hotlines or reinstalling the system(s) complete-ly.Recognizing the cause of such problems, andrealizing that they are often attributable to frag-mentation, can save considerable time, effort,and cost, which is a major gain.

Microsoft's integrated defrag-mentation solutions

The problematic nature of fragmentation wasdiscovered back in DOS times, which was thecause of Microsoft's essential addition"defrag.exe". This is a very simple utility withthe single capability of analysing the coherenceof data and, if necessary, of rearranging them.This tool gained great popularity because ofthe significant increase in performance. As ashell version, it found its way into the consu-mer line Windows 95 (a, b and c), Windows 98(and 98 SE) and, in form of a slightly fasterversion, into the Windows Millennium Edition.The professional systems Windows NT3.51/4.0 were, thanks to HPFS/NTFS, toutedas solutions to which the theory of fragmenta-

tion didn't apply. That optimistic bright picturedisappeared in a blinkare unacceptable limitati-ons to take as this integrated tool, based on"Diskeeper" from Executive Software, only hasthe ability to access a single local volume. Nonetwork support, no parallel defragmentationsof hard drives, not even the possibilities ofscripted defragmentation or scheduled jobs aregiven in this poor solution. The individualneeds of a user profile (File server, CAD/CAEapplications, Office, games etc.) are neithermentioned nor noticed: Only one singlemethod is available to satisfy the vast variety ofusers with differently structured hard disks,various operations and multiple demands onperformance. Even system resources are a pro-blem; the Millennium Edition user must choo-se between defragmentation or smooth workwith the computer.Thus, it became clear that administrators orprofessional users missed precision, diversity offunctions and speed when they thought of thesolutions created so far. As this need becameapparent, a few small third-party tools weredeveloped, only to be eclipsed when a compe-titor arose with a new overwhelming technolo-gy and a superior solution to the problem.That solution: Defrag V6 from O&O Software.

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The news of O&O Defrag 2000 spread like abushfire, initially in Germany where the pro-duct was developed, and then throughout theworldwide international market. Even faster,the product gained recommendations, positivereviews and a series of awards, which resultedin rising publicity. Still, although Version 6(O&O Defrag V6) is one of the most success-ful applications on the market, there remainpeople who continue to question the benefitsof paying for a commercial defragmentationsolution when it appears that the Microsoftalternative can apparently do the same job. Toanswer this question, one can point out thevariety of much more thorough methods or thehigh speed of those procedures, but such ele-ments are to be explained further on in thispaper. A more important aspect for systemadministrators is the possibility of rolling out adefragmentation job with great ease -- youchoose among the methods, you select the tar-get drive and further options, and you determi-ne the exact point in time at which the jobshould start. When you think in terms of timereduction or economy this is an essentialadvantage that minimizes the need to buy newequipment and reduces maintenance time onexisting equipment. As previously mentioned,fragmentation causes needless wear of hard-ware and avoidable system failures, which, on along term, lead to high costs for enterprises --the task of an administrator to keep these costsas low as possible is being made easy by O&ODefrag V6.Developer or designer, whose personal compu-ters need to deal with a large amount of I/Oloads daily, may not rely on multiprocessorenvironments and broad memory interfacesbut have to offer their systems a continuousfast hard disk access. This is the only wayexpensive high-end hardware can unfold itsmaximum performance and output: A highlyfragmented storage device arguably cannot liveand operate in harmony with other system

components, not to mention the time loss, timebeing a critical commodity in an industry inwhich quick response is the key to success.Special features like intelligent backgrounddefragmentation are a further aspect of thistheory because it executes the rearrangementof the disk drive while operating on very lowresources. More ideas supporting this ROI(Return on investment) thesis are to be foundon internet at the address below:

The next few pages explores the capacity of theBerlin-based software enterprise O&O to liveup to the expectations developed above. Herewe'll make wide ranging comparisons withalternative solutions and submit performanceas well as other evaluative aspects to a criticalexamination.

O&O Defrag V6 - The goal of O&O Software

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Return on investment with O&O Defrag V6

http://www.oo-software.com/en/products/oodefrag/investment.html

next file. The advantage is that no analyzed datahas to be kept in memory. Sometimes "Stealth"defragmentation works even faster than an ana-lysis (especially in cases of low fragmentation).There is, however, one drawback to thismethod: The files are defragmented right onthe place where they are initially located, whichcan leave open spaces.

Perfect order: The "Space" optimization

When you have performed numerous(de)installations, file movements or deletions,the gaps on your hard drive escalate sharplyupwards. Since contiguity is needed to maintainlow access times, the "Space" method addresseshard drives with many gaps to restore this con-tiguity across the HD. The algorithm finds freeareas of the hard disk and checks where defrag-mented files fit in the most. Although efficien-cy and speed are great, this method is mostcomparable to the procedure of the windowsdefragmentation tool. Even so, our analysisshows that "Stealth" achieves much more tho-rough results. I definitely recommend thismethod for the daily defragmentation routinein the background because the use of resourcesis on minimum and the result is the mostimpressive.

System partition's best way togain performance:"COMPLETE/Name"

The "COMPLETE" methods perform a com-plex reorganisation of your drive's structureand offer different user groups various ways oforganisation.The first one, "COMPLETE/Name", sortsfiles on a partition/drive in an alphabetic orderfrom A to Z, which is especially effective onsystem partitions or drives with static data thatdon't change often. Files, which are located in

The variety of defragmentation methods tochoose from is a unique feature of O&O'sleading edge product and is responsive to thechallenge that no user profile is exactly compa-rable to any other. Other products fail to diffe-rentiate whether you are a network administra-tor, editor of large multimedia files or "only"the user of common office products. Theyoffer a one size fits all solution, which necessa-rily compromises mission-critical elements toattain a simplistic solution. The following intro-duces all of O&O Defrag V6´s methods andhelps you determine which of those algorithmsbest suits you.

Breaking the speed limit with"Stealth"

The "Stealth" method executes defragmentati-on silently in the background. The primary goalwas to develop a method based on speed andfree system resources, while working with ahigh number of files and/or thousands ofgigabytes of data. File servers benefit from theeconomy of this approach since the lowamount of available drive space and memorydoesn't justify a more extensive method. Still,because of the necessary performance limitati-on, "Stealth" isn't as thorough as the othermethods though it offers (even for workstati-ons) a good start for defragmentation -- this isespecially the case in environments where timeand resources are measured short. My recom-mendation : use the "Stealth" method for yourfirst defragmentation with O&O Defrag V6, soas to reduce the reorganization efforts of othermethods used subsequently, or if you ownresource dependent file servers.Something unique to "Stealth" is its facility towork with just one single file so that there is noneed of an analysis before defragmentationstarts (all other methods and third-party pro-ducts lack that). When "Stealth" starts, it looksfor the first file of the hard disk. If it's frag-mented, it simply defrags it. After that, this fileis "forgotten" and "Stealth" moves on to the

Defrag V6 methods - Going into details

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one folder, are accessed much faster -- forexample the contents of the Windows folderare sorted alphabetically and after that lie in oneeasy accessible area for the hard disk's r/whead, which is a promise for performancegains. The result is not only the increasingspeed but also a decrement of boot time. Thedisadvantages definitely lie in the system'sstressful occupation, which threatens smoothwork a little while defragmenting, and the dura-tion.

"COMPLETE/Modified" - Reliableserver optimization

Like "Name" this method is time and resourcecostly and tracks the date of changes made to afile. Files that are not changed often are trans-ferred to the beginning of the drive while fre-quently modified files are moved toward theend of the drive. The theory behind this: IfO&O Defrag V6 were to move the frequentlyused files to the beginning of the drive (whichis further loaded with system files), it wouldlead to a certain chaotic fragmentation in thisimportant area of the disk, for instance, if thesize of these files was to suddenly increase: thefirst parts of the files would be located at thebeginning of the drive while the rest (the lateraddition) would be at the end of the disk,which would lead, after a while, to one of themost fragmented file servers in history. A treatfor administrators: since the changes are onlymade at the end of the partition/drive, furtherdefragmentation processes finish extremelyquickly. Owners of workstations, with largepartition contents modified infrequently (butregularly), should try out the "Modified"method.

"COMPLETE/Access" - The allrounder

This method is equivalent to "Modified" almostin every single point, the sole difference beingthat files which are accessed (and not justchanged) frequently are moved to the end ofthe hard drive. This method is equally suitablefor workstations and server because of lowfragmentation located at the end, which, ofcourse, results in less time requirement whenO&O Defrag V6 is next performed.

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2. Database-/file server with fre-quent file changes, but a greatnumber of unchanged files:

As mentioned above, the "Stealth" methodshould be the first step to reach maximum per-formance. The next step brings you to "COM-PLETE/Modified" and therefore to a betterorganisation of frequently changed data.Other targeted environments: Workstationswith frequent changes on a certain number offiles as in the professional video-/audio-/photo-editing industry.I recommend separating the system partition(for example C:\ with the operating system andyour applications) from partitions with a data-base or data shared with the network and todefrag this system partition (after "Stealth")with "COMPLETE/Name". Because of thefewer changes made to those data this methodis the best way to improve performance. In thecase of a frequently changed system partition,the "Space" method should be considered as analternative because it runs on low resources andis still very fast.

According to the area of application, this que-stion has simple answers:

1. Database-/file server with fre-quent accesses:

The first thing to do should be a defragmenta-tion with the economic method "Stealth" toprovide a solid basis for further defragmentati-ons with other methods and thus to save time.It is advisable to run "COMPLETE/Access"after that to defrag often accessed files. For ser-vers relying on free resources, a run with the"Activity Guard Pro" (explained later) turnedon should be considered.Other targeted environments: Workstationswith frequent accesses to a certain number offiles like all-round-PCs for Office, multimedia,developing, games, internet etc.

Now which methods should be used on what drive andin which order?

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The built-in defragmentation tool fromMicrosoft/Executive is only able to work withits core feature but cannot be furthermore usedin terms of functionality or performance.Beside the explained methods, O&O DefragV6 is the only defragmentation software withsuch a wide variety of features, which are des-cribed in-depth below:

Activity Guard Pro

While third-party products or the internal MSdefragmentation solution draw most of theavailable resources from a system, O&O goesin a different direction by giving their custo-mers the essential possibility of regulating theCPU/RAM usage. The subroutine"AutoSense" determines the current usage anddynamically limits the resources diverted todefragmentation activities -- this, of course,results in a slower defragmentation but guaran-tees a smoother overall working environment.So if you are dealing with demanding tasks theActivity Guard adjusts the defragmentationperformance to a minimum level, which letsyou finish the work with all available CPU-/RAM resources. This "AutoSense" feature canbe deactivated easily so that other permanentand unimportant processes don't slow downO&O Defrag V6: The benefit is, for example,visible to administrators who finished work inthe evening and want to defrag their clients wit-hout slowdowns or interruptions -- simply asfast as possible. If the administrator knows theaverage resource usage, they can adjust the per-centage of defragmentation resources.

Job management

This technology is capable of rolling out O&ODefrag V6 jobs throughout a network/domain.Furthermore it is possible to set every singleproperty of this job like the method, Boot-

Time defragmentation etc. for several groups ina network (called "Sites") individually - file ser-vers after all need other settings than commonworkstations do. The "O&O Defrag Agent"helps deploying those Defrag V6 jobs.

The Job management consists of 5 sections,which make for easy configuration setup: Youcan adjust the start or ending time, the intervaland the time limit as well as the Boot-Timedefragmentation (mentioned later) or AREreports - although those reports can also bewritten into the event protocol of Windows. Ifyou wish, your computer can automatically per-form a shutdown or a restart to devote itself toBoot-Time defragmentation after finishing theregular task. Group policies for the defragmen-tation process can also be set so that users arenot able to change settings within the job.

Sequential/parallel defragmenta-tion with O&O Defrag V6

Physically separated drives should enjoy thebenefits of parallel defragmentation while par-titions should better be rearranged sequentially- O&O Defrag V6 delivers both. Although theparallel defragmentation calls on a amount ofresources, it guarantees the fastest way of finis-hing highly fragmented drives. The paralleldefragmentation of multiple partitions is notsupported because of the fact that theread/write head would have to jump amongmany more clusters, which could unsatisfacto-rily increase the time required and could consu-me system usage.

O&O Defrag V6 - Technology Overview

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Boot-Time/Offline-defragmentation

O&O makes differences between online- andoffline-defragmentation. The online versiontakes place in the console of O&O Defrag V6and allows multitasking with other applicationswhile the offline version is executed within theboot process (in later boot stages where driversare initialized). It performs the following opera-tions:

- MFT-defragmentation: The Master File Table(MFT) contains gathered data of a hard disk:When was a file created or changed? What attri-butes does it have? What size does it have andwhere is it located (etc.)? This informationchanges frequently and so the table is predesti-ned to become fragmented. In terms of file ordata accessing under Windows this could meanan intense loss of performance, which wasquickly understood by O&O Software whonow offer their customers this rare offlineMFT-defragmentation. O&O Defrag V6 forWindows XP/2003 now includes the online-defragmentation of the MFT (and registry).

- FAT/FAT32 devices don't allow folders to bedefragmented within the Management Console- so this has to be done in offline-mode. Incontrast NTFS directories are easily rearrangedin online-mode by O&O Defrag V6 withWindows 2000/XP/2003 (exception: WindowsNT).

- Page file defragmentation: The danger of loo-sing the page file integrity (in terms of frag-mentation) is imminent and so is the resultingbottleneck, which occurs exactly in situationsof decreasing free memory when the page fileis under heavy use - the page file automaticallysplits itself and spreads throughout the wholedisk to fill out the existing gaps when the file

size increases. The dramatically needed fastaccess on the page file no longer exists.

- Hibernation file: O&O Defrag V6 can defragthe "hiberfil.sys", a memory dump with which acomputer can freeze the current Windowssituation (Running programs, logins, windowconstellations etc.) and allows continuing thework with this "snapshot" even after the shut-down. To guarantee a very fast "wake-up" fromhibernation O&O Defrag V6´s priority is tomaintain this file coherent.

- Registry: It is one of the Windows core com-ponents and therefore responsible for perfor-mance - but also susceptible to unnecessaryentries, malicious links or superfluous softwareinstallations. Those factors play an essential rolein making the registry increase its size (worstcase scenario: Approx. 30 MB or more) andscatter here and there resulting in a loss ofresponsiveness. O&O Defrag V6´s job again isto ensure a contiguous registry, which is conti-nuously (and rapidly) accessible.

- All the other files, which are opened whileO&O Defrag V6´s operation takes place: Worddocuments, which are edited, MP3-Files, whichare loaded as well as databases (SQL, Exchangeetc.), which are used are defragmented offline.

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Advanced Report Engine (ARE)

With this useful feature you can easily createdetailed (HTML) statistics: They show thedrive's scenario before and after a defragmenta-tion as well as a status report on the hard diskwith information like capacity, clusters, MFT,number of files and defragmented data. Irecommend storing these reports to maintain arecord, which shows you the exact degree offragmentation (for example) of a whole month.With the help of that report you can tracedown often fragmented files to solve perfor-mance related problems.

- What was impossible in O&O Defrag V4 isnow possible in V6: Defragmentation of driveswith only 5% of free disk space.

- You can access different tasks like "Analysis","Defragmentation" or "Automatization" withinthe Windows XP/2003-like "Sidebar".

- Power Management for Notebooks: This fea-ture prevents the power drain that would resultfrom defragmentation activity while the com-puter is in battery mode. The job is continuedas soon as the computer is again plugged into apower line.

- OneButtonDefrag: A wizard makes defrag-mentation more than easy - a single click isrequired to start the whole process.

- O&O ComponentInstaller: Distributesinstances of O&O Defrag V6 over the LAN,which are controlled by the Server Edition.

Overview of O&O Defrag V6´s additional features:

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The screenshot seen here is no fake: This is the appearance of a hard disk withoutmaintenance after a few months. Application's or operation's speed decreases dra-matically.

It is difficult to trust a program for which thecore operations run secretly in the background.The quality of most applications is measuredby your early experiences with it in terms ofresults or comfort. The raw effectiveness ofdefragmentation remains hidden and obscure.The perceptible benefit that you get as a"result" is an increase of speed. So this white-paper contains a series of performance verifi-cations with O&O Defrag V6 and furthermorea critical comparison with the strongest compe-titor Diskeeper 8.0 from the established com-pany Executive Software.

Maximum fragmentation - the test environment

Our goal was to achieve an exact measurementof performance with both tools before andafter defragmentation on a highly fragmentedtest system. O&O Defrag V6 was installed on13 network clients and 5 home computers, eachof them having been under intense use formore than 18 months. Surprisingly, amongthem were systems with a fragmentation degreeof far more than 15%, which (as a whole) leadsto the average fragmentation of 20,2%: This isa huge loss of performance attributable to theread head's erratic accesses all over the harddrive area which repeats itself with virtuallyevery single action (Boot up, loading applicati-ons, subprograms, libraries etc.). To test O&ODefrag V6 and Diskeeper under realistic condi-tions (on an AMD 1333 MHz, 512 megs ofRAM, 60 GB Seagate Barracuda IV with 7200RPM) it was necessary to mess the hard driveup to a fragmentation degree of 15-20%, whichwasn't easy to achieve. The procedure:

1. Full installation of Windows Server 2003Enterprise Edition.

2. 120 additional applications, freeware, share-ware tools and updates were installed almost

simultaneously: Three runs of setups (1x60 and2x30 tools) were performed and during thoseoperations 30 programs were removed again.That was necessary to guarantee the most inef-fective way possible of using clusters and fillinggaps with scattered data from different applica-tions.3. After this, 20 programs were entirely remo-ved and copies of newly installed tools werecreated within the Windows directory.

4. Surprisingly, this only lead to a fragmentationdegree of 12%, which is why the followingmeans were used. The whole partition wascopied to a secondary instance of WindowsServer 2003 on drive E:\. 70 percent of all theoriginal data (Documents and settings, pro-grams, windows, backup folder, private files)were erased as well as the "PageFile.sys". Toprovide the highest level of fragmentation allfiles were copied back from E:\ to D:\ simul-taneously (!) in a total of 6x2 windows: Eventhose 6 copies at the same time didn't bringabout the wished for success as fragmentationonly increased to 13%.

5. Now each folder (4 GB) from drive D:\ wascompressed to 12 archives and then decom-pressed at once in a random order. The resultnow was a full success: 21,105% fragmentation.This corresponds to a frequently used worksta-tion or server which goes without defragmenta-tion for approx. 6 months.

For further tests, this condition needed to besaved as an image (for which we used AcronisTrueImage). We measured the performancebefore and after defragmentation with theexamples explained below. The important thingis not for you to see familiar tools in action, butto experience various operations of a harddrive in several tasks like collecting data,

Benchmarks and Comparison

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moving, writing, copying and so on. The resultscan be transferred to every single applicationarea because this benchmark is based on anumber of small and large file operations.

1. Boot up:

The Windows boot up process was the firsttask to take care of. Drivers, kernel files, dyna-mic link libraries (DLL), prefetches, servicesand auto run programs (etc.) are loaded fromdifferent parts all over a disk drive. A highlyfragmented disk can lead to very bad results,which is why this had to be performed by thetwo competitors O&O Defrag V6 andExecutive Diskeeper 8.0.The Windows boot up process was the firsttask to take care of. Drivers, kernel files, dyna-mic link libraries (DLL), prefetches, servicesand auto run programs (etc.) are loaded fromdifferent parts all over a disk drive. A highlyfragmented disk can lead to very bad results,which is why this had to be performed by thetwo competitors O&O Defrag V6 andExecutive Diskeeper 8.0.Value before defragmentation: 1 minute 10seconds

Access times of files play an essential role inthe performance of an application. For thebenchmarks we looked for programs with per-manent extensive operations on the disk drive,such as accessing large and little chunks of filesor moving, copying, erasing or replacing them.The whole range of cases a workstation or aserver has to deal with daily is covered to showthe user visible results: The following tasks offile operation had to be performed….

NetObjects Fusion file:

This web editor was loaded with the onlineWindows portal "Windows-Tweaks" (size ofthe highly fragmented file: 39 MB) and hun-dreds of pictures and text elements. The timeneeded for opening this file, for opening a sin-gle site and the compression of the file wasrecorded.Values before defragmentation:Value before defragmentation: 1 minute 10secondsOpening the .nod file: 7 secondsOpening a site: 4 secondsCompressing the .nod file: 16 seconds

Ulead PhotoImpact:

This professional photo-editing suite is compa-rable to the typical application of a server orworkstation. Dozens of megabytes (libraries,masks, effects, fonts etc.) are loaded by the pro-gram. Fragments of those PI files were foundthroughout the whole disk drive.Duration of the application loading beforedefragmentation: 13 seconds

1. Boot up:

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2. Operations in programs/Windows:

VMware 4.0:

An application often run by experts, whichemulates several computers and operatingsystems within a window on the host system.The time needed for the boot up of Windows2000 Professional (1 GB VMDK, virtual diskfile - highly fragmented) was recorded precise-ly. Value before defragmentation: 56 seconds

Copying a folder (2,25 GB) with13.872 files:

Servers permanently have a high load of differ-ently sized file operations. So a very fragmentedfolder was copied from one partition to anot-her.Duration: 8 minutes 45 seconds

Windows Media Player:

Adding 240 multimedia files to the playlist. Theduration indicated corresponds to the exacttime needed for the WMP to find those frag-mented a/v files and sum them up to a playlist.Duration: 22 secondsAutomatic increase of the page file: Via VB-script ("FreeMem = Space(512000000)")almost the whole RAM was emptied by writing(and deleting) millions of spaces into it, whichforces Windows to swap the memory's contentand to increase the page file enormously. Thetime lost by that operation is recorded and willserve as basis o measure the efficiency of theBoot-Time defragmentation.Occupation: 17 seconds

Microsoft Office Professional2003:

The simultaneous loading of each application(Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook etc.) showsthe effect of fragmentation on multiple acces-ses at once. Because of the fact that the RAMis still empty (by VB-script) most of the neces-sary files (Windows and Office files, whichwere loaded by the prefetcher) needed to beaccessed and loaded again.Time needed to open all programs: 8 seconds3D-Mark 2003: The different synthetic 3D-engines load a variety of (fragmented in ourcase) textures into RAM. The score of the firstbenchmark was taken out because the files useddirectly came from the disk drive.Score before defragmentation: 4989 points

Sandra 2004 benchmark:

At last the drive's overall performance wastested. The results of Sandra 2004 are veryconcise and so this tool was used for purebenchmarking.HD score: 32 MB/s

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Diskeeper is one of the oldest defragmentationtools in the industry and thus can rely on itsdevelopers' long experience. We confined ourtesting almost solely to the performance ofDiskeeper 8.0, although the handling, shell andthe functions are explained in the followingreport:Diskeeper 8.0 has similarities with O&ODefrag V6 in terms of handling because therecent version also has an XP-like sidebar,which enables access to essential components -- even the arrangement of those items is simi-lar. Diskeeper's unique attributes are the expla-nations for the hard drive, degree of fragmen-tation, analysis results or info about the currentperformance. The degree of accuracy of theresults is, of course, another question, which isunderlined by the following evidence: WhileO&O Defrag V6 shows a 21% fragmentation,Diskeeper reported that 47% of the wholedrive and 65% (!) of all files are fragmented andthat a defragmentation would result in a perfor-mance boost of approx. 50%. Unfortunately,such "facts" are of little value in the face ofthese obvious discrepancies.Diskeeper solely offers a thorough, a fast and a"Space"-like method. The bases for choosingamong these methods is never explained -- noteven in the thin manual. On the plus side, atleast, the software allows the creation of jobsand automatic defragmentation.Only the thorough method of Diskeeper wasrelevant for the benchmark. We were at firstpositively surprised as the whole process ofdefragmentation was completed within a fewminutes. The cluster view proved this by sho-wing hardly any red areas, which indicated thatthe drive had been neatly defragmented. Thedisk was defragmented twice and had to under-go the Boot-Time optimization, after which thebenchmark marathon was finally started.

Executive Software Diskeeper 8.0

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0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

Sekunden

Standard

Diskeeper 8

O&O Defrag V6

SystemstartBoot Up

seconds

To test the defragmentation the "Stealth", the"COMPLETE/Access" method and the offli-ne-defragmentation were executed on thehighly fragmented disk the image of which hadbeen stored in a backup. The best results ofeach single area are set off in a different colour(and bold).

1. Boot Up

Standard: 70 secondsExecutive Diskeeper 8.0: 60 secondsO&O Defrag V6: 43 seconds (!)

In words: Diskeeper's reduction of 10 secondssurprised at first but the quality of the Boot-Time optimization and the pretty effectiveCOMPLETE/Access method was shown bythe fact that O&O Defrag V6 did an impressi-ve job with the eradication of that bottleneck.

2. Operations inprograms/Windows

NetObjects Fusion 7.0Opening the .nod fileStandard: 7 secondsExecutive Diskeeper 8.0: 7 secondsO&O Defrag V6: 6 seconds

Opening a siteStandard: 4 secondsExecutive Diskeeper 8.0: 3 secondsO&O Defrag V6: 3 seconds

Compressing the .nod fileStandard: 16 secondsExecutive Diskeeper 8.0: 15 seconds

O&O Defrag V6: 16 secondsIn words: NetObjects Fusion was hardly influ-enced by the defragmentation, so it is impossi-ble to come to a clear conclusion. Further ana-lysis showed that the essential NetObjects fileslied close together. But even these results wererecorded exactly and for that show a slight gainof minimally fragmented programs or files indefragmentation.

Ulead PhotoImpact 8.0 - loadingthe applicationStandard: 13 secondsExecutive Diskeeper 8.0: 12 secondsO&O Defrag V6: 11 seconds

In words: Due to the high CPU-usage necessa-ry to start PhotoImpact 8.0 it is impressive thatsuch a dramatic shortening was achieved.Again: O&O Defrag V6 is the shining star.

VMware 4.0 - booting up a virtu-al machine

Standard: 56 secondsExecutive Diskeeper 8.0: 84 secondsO&O Defrag V6: 42 seconds

Benchmark results

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0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

Sekunden

Standard

Diskeeper 8

O&O Defrag V6

SystemstartBoot Up

Seconds

things worse than they were before - althoughthis time scarcely to be noticed. This test repre-sents operations of large files and highlydemanding programs and so O&O Defrag V6again is to be praised for the reduction in pro-cessing time of almost one minute it achieved -- remarkably faster accesses (the goal of alldefragmentation software) are here the happyresults.

Windows Media Player - Creatingthe playlistStandard: 22 secondsExecutive Diskeeper 8.0: 22 secondsO&O Defrag V6: 18 seconds

In words: Only fast file access (without readinga file completely) is needed. As the benchmarksheretofore have shown, O&O Defrag V6 is atrue specialist in this area. Again performancegains were achieved under circumstances inwhich Diskeeper failed to achieve anything.

Automatic increase of the pagefileStandard: 17 secondsExecutive Diskeeper 8.0: 16 secondsO&O Defrag V6: 13 seconds

In words: One thing that defragmentation hasto be able to guarantee is the optimal movingand contiguity of the page file and furthermo-re the ability to accommodate effectively a sud-den size increase. While once more Diskeeperachieved only a slight increase, O&O DefragV6 was able to win again and by a full 4seconds, a gain of nearly 25%.

VMware 4.0 - booting up a virtu-al machine

Standard: 56 secondsExecutive Diskeeper 8.0: 84 secondsO&O Defrag V6: 42 seconds

In words: Expect a disaster to happen after thedefragmentation of a disk containing a VMwith Diskeeper. Apparently the virtual machine(the 1 GB file) was so split by DK and defrag-mented that the drive needed to access nearlyevery area in order to collect the necessary data.O&O Defrag V6's ability to handle even suchlarge files is shown in the approximately 25%acceleration achieved here. Diskeeper devel-opers should take notice here, as no user will behappy having paid only to experience such anoticeable deterioration of speed in their mostdemanding applications. The decisive winnerhere is Defrag V6!

Copying a 2,25 GB directoryStandard: 8 minutes 45 secondsExecutive Diskeeper 8.0: 8 minutes 56 secondsO&O Defrag V6: 7 minutes 52 seconds

In words: Here again Diskeeper only showedconsistency in one thing and that is making

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0 20 40 60 80 100

Sekunden

Standard

Diskeeper 8

O&O Defrag V6

VMware 4.0 - Starten einer virtuellen MaschineBooting up a virtual machine

Seconds

Benchmark - The bottom line

Time needed to open the Officeprograms simultaneously

Standard: 8 secondsExecutive Diskeeper 8.0: 7 seconds

O&O Defrag V6: 7 seconds

In words: Although the results of this bench-mark are hardly decisive, a slight boost wasobserved. More demanding applications show-ed even larger differences in the loading time ofprograms.

3D-Mark 2003: Score after firstuse of the benchmark

Standard: 4989 pointsExecutive Diskeeper 8.0: 4997 pointsO&O Defrag V6: 5059 points

In words: At first it probably appears ridiculousto include a benchmark for graphic cards in thetest of defragmentation solutions but the factsshow a logical use: The benchmark consists ofa single huge file (448 MB), which is, during thebenchmark, permanently accessed to loadsounds, models etc. into memory -- because ofthe fact that 3D-Mark differs between theslightest variation of frames per seconds (FPS)it is easy to judge the performance after eachtool. The small increase here only appearsbecause the main factor involved is the 3D-accelerator. And again O&O Defrag V6 winsanother discipline because the loading of dataafter defragmentation appeared to be faster andso resulted in a higher frame rate.

Sandra 2004 disk drive benchmark

Standard: 32 MB/sExecutive Diskeeper 8.0: 33 MB/sO&O Defrag V6: 34 MB/s

In words: Sandra uses a simple procedure totest the performance of an entire drive or par-tition -- the pure performance shows the timenecessary to create and move files. Since thatfile is newly created, the results are not alwaysindicative because there is a different constella-tion of fragmented clusters -- it certainly couldbe that on one disk drive this file is spread outthroughout the partition while on another diskthe file completely fills a gap: For "Windows-Tweaks" (a German Windows site) the sametest was performed on a severely fragmenteddisk but that time the results showed incredibledifferences. The fragmented disk (15 MB/s)lost against the defragmented disk (20 MB/s),which is an increase of performance by 25%.Thus Sandra 2004 is mentioned in this whitepa-per. It furthermore shows that not every com-puter is fragmented/defragmented the sameway but a tendency is always noticeable.

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Benchmark - The bottom line

Each benchmark was performed not only onebut three times to determine divergences,which were observable. The average value ofthose divergences was calculated and used -- incases like 3D-Mark or VMware they werehighly noticeable. It was impressive to see thatO&O Defrag V6 really was able to increase theoverall performance like no other tool -- notonly did benchmarks prove this point but alsothe countless tests followed afterwards andsubsequent work with the machine. The loserof this fight is Diskeeper 8.0 because of theminimal performance improvement it providesbut especially, and more to the point, becauseof the slowdowns, which occurred in sometests -- a true disappointment for paying custo-mers. Although Executive's solution works fastit doesn't even have an appeal for impatientusers/administrators, to whom it might other-wise appeal despite its obvious defects, simplybecause it is even surpassed in terms of execu-tion time and result by the "Stealth" method ofO&O Defrag V6..

Notation of the author: Those benchmarkresults are actual facts. Although this whitepa-per was created for O&O Software GmbH, Iproceeded independently and I would neverjeopardize my reputation with unrealistic andbiased results. After helping users for 3 yearsthrough my website, I wouldn't turn my backon them here by misrepresenting results -- Iwas positively surprised by the results and willbe happy to reproduce them under observationfor any qualified doubters who agree to publishtheir findings.

The press agrees: O&O Defrag V6 receivedtop awards and enjoys highest popularity. "Ifyou want to keep your system running at topspeed for longer, you'll certainly need to have adefragmenter, and this is one case where dit-ching a free tool for the extra power and con-venience of O&O Defrag (V6) is a definitemust" writes "PC-Plus", which honors O&ODefrag with its "Editor's Choice" award.Dozens of other respected publications havegiven O&O Defrag V6 renown in its niche andhave observed it under test conditions withhighly demanding applications as the singlewinner against the high number of competi-tors.This whitepaper also proves this application tobe able to surpass other tools in terms of hand-ling, features and the pickup in performance tobe expected. In the course of my advisory workI have encountered doubtful users who don'treally believe in the science of defragmentationand its effects on performance and stability.The goal of this whitepaper is to overcome thatbias by testing the high quality product O&ODefrag V6 and thereby demonstrating onceand for all its effectiveness.My personal experience with O&O goes backalmost 3 years. Since then, I have remained aloyal user of the product line, although I conti-nue to test each competitor's offerings likethose from Executive Software and Symantecto get the big picture. From all these experi-ences I can come to only one conclusion.Among all of the available defragmentationsolutions O&O Defrag V6 is the only invest-ment that's worth the price.

O&O Software - Conclusion

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Genre: Professional solution for fragmentation

Methods: 5 different varieties- Stealth- Space- COMPLETE/Access- COMPLETE/Modified - COMPLETE/Name

Advantages: Essential acceleration of thecomputer with increments in terms of reliabili-ty/stability.

Contact information:

O&O Software GmbHAm Borsigturm 48, 13507 Berlin, GermanyTel. +49 30 4303 4303, Fax: +49 30 4303 4399Web: http://www.oo-software.commailto: info@oo-software.com

Author of this document:

Sandro Villinger(MVP for Windows Shell/User)

Short facts

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