The best things about this hard drive defragmenting tool are what it doesn't do. It doesn't get in the way of you working. It doesn't require you to make a succession of decisions each time you want it to do its job. And it doesn't take as long to defragment your hard drive as the in-built Windows utility does.

Upon startup, Diskeeper Home Edition takes seconds to analyze your hard drive(s) and report on what it finds. If it's anything like our test machine, then it'll report back that defragmentation is very much in order! However, credit is due here, because instead of reporting back a series of statistics, the software gives you a visual breakdown of the state of your drive. This display uses colour-coding to show which files are fragmented and which aren't, and when you ultimately choose to set the deframentation process going, this display is continually updated alongside the more traditional, percentage-of-the-job-done figure.

In fact, one factor that sits strongly in Diskeeper's favour is that it always tells you what's going on. After analyzing your drive, it tells you the state of it and makes a recommendation on what to do next. You can hit a button to view a more detailed report, which tells you which files are fragmented the most, for instance.

Yet ultimately, this isn't the most important thing to someone who simply buys a tool to do a job - and this is where Diskeeper plays its trump card. The box makes much of the program's 'Set It And Forget It' feature, whereby you spend a minute or two scheduling the software, then never worry about it again. Put simply, you can tell it to regularly check and defragment your drives, which it will do in the background with no input required from you. It would be a lie to say that you can't tell when it's running - defragging a drive does tend to slow things down if you're working on the same machine simultaneously - but it at least lifts some of the hassle off your shoulders.

One thing to note. Try as it might, and while, as mentioned before, it does offer speed improvements over the Windows built-in equivalent, defragging a hard drive still can take a very long time. The box may boast that it can increase the speed of the job by up to five times - although we got nowhere this figure in our tests - but it's still a job that's best carried out by leaving your PC alone to get on with it.

We did have a few mild complaints. For the novice user, despite the simplicity of the program's operation, it's still not the most friendly looking piece of software in terms of its user interface. Also, it does involve you forking out when there's a tool that can do the job - admittedly not as well - within Windows itself. It's undoubtedly an improvement on that module, but how many people are going to feel compelled to shell out for a replacement?

Verdict
Diskeeper Home Edition is a tidy, professional and hard working piece of software, although most people will be fine with the equivalent utility bundled free with Windows. That said, this product will probably speed your computer up a bit.

Company: Executive Software

Contact: 01342 327477

Tags: defragmentation hard disk drive microsoft windows windows personal computer diskeeper shareware utilities