SpeeDisk

Defragmenters, defragmenters, defragmenters, defragmenters! But where, oh where, is the SpeeDisk clone?

I guess that SpeeDisk was waaaaaaaay ahead of it's time, after all. To this day, I haven't seen one Defragmenter that could live up to it.

Okay, there was ONE ... That one was released with DOS and was a licensed version of it, I understand. It was also stripped down, and incarnations of it lasted in to Windows 98 Second Edition, but none of them could match the power, efficiency, useability and customizability of the original.

SpeeDisk: More than a disk defragmentor, it was a complete disk optimizing tool in and of itself.

Have a bunch of files you use more than others? Tell SpeeDisk to put them up front. Files you rarely use? Move those files to the back. Or, even better, to move these files up front, and those files in back ... in the same run!

Have big files to defragment? SpeeDisk had no problems working with them, even during routine defragmentations.

Have very little disk space? SpeeDisk could defragment even with almost no disk space at all. Of course, it was super slow, writing the two or three bytes of data you actually had free in each iteration, but ... It could do it.

It had an easy to use interface, that was totally controlled by the mouse. Point and click all the way, with as much power and useability as you could ever want. Hell, at the time SpeeDisk was invented, a lot of software engineers, in their efforts to combat piracy, set up their programs so certain files had to be in certain locations on a disk! Subsequently, SpeeDisk had a feature where you could give it a file name and a disk address where it had to be, and lo! SpeeDisk would put that file exactly where you told it to!

Why is it Peter Norton could see what we needed in a defragmentation utility and could produce such a masterpiece? Why is it so hard for people to duplicate his work today? I mean, clearly, the "defragmentation API" of today should simplify his work, and would certainly make creating such a beautiful piece of software relatively easy. So why aren't there more SpeeDisk clones out there?

I have no idea why these software developers of today can't get something as simple as SpeeDisk right. But I do know that I have a game I play that has four huge files. They range in size from 1GB to 2.5GB, and each and every one of those files is fragmented quite badly. This results in very low framerates sometimes, since the computer is busy searching the entirety of my modest 200GB hard drive to get all the data together to move around. But there is no modern SpeeDisk like utility that will defragment them and put them up front. At least, not without painful, time consuming, disk fatigueing contortions that would certainly have put their products out of business if SpeeDisk were still around.

It's not such a hard concept to grasp. If a file is in the way of defragmenting and optimizing this large file: Move it out of the way. If the file can't be moved: Relocate the big file so it isn't fragmented. If there is no single place for the big file || the file has to be where it's being put, then fragment the big file.

SpeeDisk did it. And that program ran on MS- and PC-DOS 2.10, from way back in the dark ages of computers, like 1986 or so. Why can't a "new" "modern" program do this?

 

If your looking too speed up your pc then try this on for size.

System Mechanic Professional 8.5

http://majorgeeks.com/download4384.html

Another version of speedisk clone
SpeeDisk clone
http://www.5starshare.com/free-download-26322.html

 

I have submitted a request for information regarding the software suite you identified. It seems that matching the functionality found in Norton SpeeDisk, which was part of the Norton Utilities, is a mighty tall order.

Norton SpeeDisk, in it's documention, listed these features that I am aware of:

• It defragmented all the files of your drive.
• It defragmented all freespace on your drive.
• It could sort the files to your specifications to improve performance. It would allow you to specify which files should be "first" to give them better performance. It would actually move files you specified as "first" to the front of the disk, reorganizing the disk as necessary to do so.
• It would do this all in one pass. It sometimes took a while, but it did it in one pass, instead of the three or four most other utilities seem to require that are "one pass optimization utilities" of today.
• It had a feature where you could copy certain program disks, and then use SpeeDisk to match the layout of the disk exactly. This feature was used to make sure backup copies of software still worked.

There is no single utility I have found that does all these things. "Defragmenters" today are supposed to be modern day versions of SpeeDisk, but don't offer nearly the same functionality. "Optimizers" today are woefully lacking, as a rule, compared to SpeeDisk.

What's the point of specifying files to place first if your application refuses to actually places them first? What's the point of trying to "optimize" a drive when it reports it can't "optimize" the slowest files because "there's not enough free contiguous disk space?"

As I said before, however, filling the shoes of Peter Norton and his Norton Utilities, and, specifically, his Norton SpeeDisk, seems to be too tall an order for anyone to fill these days.

As for the inquiry in to the suite you told me about: I can only hope they will say that yes, they are very familiar with Norton SpeeDisk and have made certain that their disk optimization utility will do everything SpeeDisk could, and more. But you won't find me holding my breath waiting for them to say, "Yes! Our utility can do it!" Many utilities today do more stuff, but they miss some of the most basic features and elements.

Ahh, programmers of today.

 

I have to agree absolutely about Norton SpeedDisk - used it in just about every version of DOS, Win 95, Win 98, Win 2K - still have 98SE and 2K boot partitions on my system HDD so I can do a decent defrag of my data HDD. In Win 2K, it would even defrag your swap space! I've tried all sorts of XP level defragers, including IODefrag, JKDefrag, etc. and either they don't work for beans or are no better that the Micro$oft version supplied with XP - and it has to run three or four times to do a half-arsed job. Am about to try the System Mechanic recommended but don't really hold much hope. Norton Utilities really has not been the same since Symantec took over.