Some friendly advise, the newest PerfectDisk defrag progam was released this week at Raxco.com. I have tried many, many defrag programs, including O&O Defrag, and Diskeeper, and I like this one the best. Keep your FS installation in its own partition and use PerfectDisk's "Smart Defrag" function to sort files by age & usage and you'll be golden. Also, be sure to run the "offline" defrags on each partition every once in a while to cleanup the MFT zone and so forth. Also, let PerfectDisk manage your boot and Layout.ini files in WinXP for fast boot-ups. If you have a lot of texture files from a lot of additional scenery utilities and programs, a quality defrag program is an absolute must.PS. I don't work for, nor support Raxco. I just wanted let my FS friends know when something works really well for simming machines.Regards,

Hi,Thank you for the heads up, whats this like compared the Diskeeper 9 Professional,That is what I use now,Thanks.

Personally, better becuase I think the defrag algorithims are more finely tuned, therefore compacting the files tighter, especially many small texture files. Also, in Diskeeper 10, there was no way to manually perform an offline defrag without creating a scheduled defrag which really annoyed me...

It's better. Simple proof is you need to defrag with Diskeeper several times to sort out everything that could be sorted by it.That's not the case with Perfectdisk - it does with them all at once.But you can give it a nice test: download a free trial version, defrag with Diskeeper several times, and than give Perfectdisk a try. You'll see it will have "untied the knots" Diskeeper couldn'd have coped with. http://www.americanpatrol.com/_icons/BS_No.gif

The Raxco website offers Version 7.0. I don't see any down load (free or otherwise) for Version 8.0. Does anyone have a link?Bob... ThanksEdit: Never mind. Apparently version 8.0 will be released 9/12 and is a free upgrade for V7 users.

Cool! I bought PD 7.0 about 6 months ago and have been very happy with it...

Yup, I just made the same mistake. I saw the buy-now button without reading the fine-print (available in another week or so). Like everything else lately, we have to wait just a little bit longer :(AL | KCHS - Charleston AFB/Intl | USAF 437AW (~53 C-17's)FS9/Game Rig:AMD64-4000+ SanDiego OC=210/420/2520 | Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe | Corsair TwinX2048-3200C2PT (2x1GB) 2.5-3-3-8/[email protected] | Evga NV 7900GT v91.31 (1280x1024x32/4xAA/16xAF/High-Quality) | Enermax 550W PSU | Thermalright XP-120(mm) HSF | NV 1GB LAN | NV SATA-I Raid-0 223GB (3x80GB Samsung) (WinXPx64/Games) | NV SATA-II WD 320GB (Backups) | IDE-0 80GB Samsung (Archive) | Realtek AC'97 5.1 Surround | CH Yoke, TQ, & Pedals | FS9.1 (Settings max'd/60-50Vis/No-Shadows/20FPS) | WideFS v6.7 | FSUIPC v3.7 | FSGenesis Mesh (All) | PMDG (All) | PAI (All) | FSBuild2 | EtcFS9 Support Rig:AMD3200+ | Gigabyte GA-7NNXP | Leadtek NV 5900 | Corsair TwinX1024-3200 (2x512MB) | Intel 1GB LAN | SiI3112 SATA-I 80GB Samsung | IDE-0 80GB IBM | JustCom 4port KVM | WideClient | GE-Pro v2 | ActiveSky v6 (512x512x32bit / Wx Influanced)| Radar Contact v4.2 | FS Real Time | FS Flight Keeper | FS Commander | AI Smooth

>>Keep your FS installation in its own partition and use PerfectDisk's "Smart Defrag" function to sort files by age & usage and you'll be golden.<< If you have multiple harddrives, indeed. With a single harddrive, putting FS on a seperate/multiple partitions is counter productive. ;-) Kind regards Jaap

>If you have multiple harddrives, indeed. With a single>harddrive, putting FS on a seperate/multiple partitions is>counter productive.I'm sorry, but without an elaborate explanation, I just don't agree. Even with one physical hard-drive, creating a second D: partition for FS has benefits. 1) Files will be sorted and defraged among only other FS files, not sorted along with the OS files, Application files, or docs. This way, the many textures files are compacted closer together for less head-travel incressing the access time. 2) You can use drive imaging software like Acronis True-Image (my choice) or Norton Ghost to keep full copies of your FS installation and be able to roll-back a FS installation without restoring the OS, Apps, and docs on the C: partition. 3) You can turn off WinXP's "system restore" monitoring for this FS partition thereby increasing access time for FS files without jeopordizing the monitoring of pertinent OS files on the C: partition.v/r,

If you click perfectdisk under the Home and Home office section you will find an evaluation feature which you need to sign up to get. It says 30 days. Not sure if it shuts down after 30 days or keeps going with reminders. Its version 7 since 8 is not yet releasedThinking about it myself :-)

The problem with that analysis about secondary partitions etc is that modern HDs are now so fast that any delay from reading on the inside of the disk vs. the outside, or from the heads having to move a little bit further to get to the next file that isn't in sequence is negligible to the point of not being perceptible. Raxco actually has an entry about this in their FAQ, answering a question like "Why doesn't Perfect Disk allow you to choose folders to keep together in one location like Norton SpeedDisk does?" and they explain what the difference is - it's infintessimally small.They even talk about a study that was done where two groups of people were told to evaluate the performance of a computer before and after defragging - one group's was actually defragged and the other's wasn't. Both groups however reported the computer "feeling" faster. Obviously some sort of placebo effect going on with the notion of how much defragging actually improves speed.

With a single HD: Which part of the HD is the fastest bit? You might agree it's the first part where C usually resides. Hence, higher transfer rates, lower seek times, etc. If partitioned, what happens when the OS needs to read/write bits ins own partition and then FS makes a call? The HD-heads will need to travel from A to B and during this time the HD-heads will not do what they're supposed to do, read or write data. There are a couple of other considerations like the OS configuring itself in relation to free space of the OS-partition or the self-optimizing functions winXP has onboard. Maybe the term pre-fetch rings a bell? HDs are THE bottleneck in nowadays systems. Why decrease performance even further with adventurious partitioning? A couple of years ago, I did 'it' too, but I've come to the conclusion t'is wrong. ;-) With 2 or more HDs it's obviously another story... Case somebody wants to operate multiple partitions and enjoy the benefits of what you described, it's probably best to buy another drive. Hope this adds to considerations, kind regards Jaap

Version 7 is here free. 8 is pay. 7 also expires in 30 days.http://www.download.com/3001-2094_4-10468459.htmlJimCYWG

Thanks for this bit of info, I'm checking it out right now.

Just for the #### of it, I downloaded the trial. It took much longer to defrag my partitioned drive than my present 'Diskeeper 10' does.I assumed that it was doing a better job but, to my dismay after defragging with Raxco I then analysed my drives with Diskeeper.Diskeeper showd that my drives needed defragging!?Confused, yeah I am too.