I used to rely on Norton’s Speed Disk, then, eventually Perfect Disc and Diskeeper to optimize my HDD. Defragmenting is the idea- an antiquated process of reorganizing bytes on spinning platter so that each file is grouped into contiguous locations on the disk. Many still believe that defragmenting hard disk drives on a regular basis keeps PCs operating at peak performance. But that idea is behind the times.
Defragmenting served its purpose back when folks chugged along on 486DX4 PCs powered by 5400rpm drives. Now those where slooooow drives and extra spindle movements arising from defragmentation truly hobbled the system. But that’s no longer the case. Today, 7200-RPM hard-disk drives with monster seek and latency times are the bare minimum; most brag a 16-MB cache buffer. Couple that with Windows XP’s high speed NTFS and you’ll quickly discover that defragmenting no longer makes much improvement, if any, to system performance. I say this after thorough experimentation on my QuadCore running on a 10,000RPM Western Digital Raptor. Read More»
Posted in Computer, Windows XP | 1 Comment »
The latest version of a solution accelerator initially dubbed Windows Vista hardware Assessment is now available for download. The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit is now at version 3.1 and has hit RTM stage. The latest build of the assessment and planning solution accelerator is tailored specifically to the most recent Windows client and server operating systems, namely Windows Vista Service Pack 1 and Windows Server 2008 SP1/RTM, including the Hyper-V release. Version 3.1 is up for grabs straight from Microsoft, and is designed to streamline as much as possible the evaluation and planning phases of large scale software migration processes in complex IT infrastructures.
“Formerly known as Windows Vista Hardware Assessment, this new release is now packed with many new features such as: Hyper-V virtualization candidates assessment (+ improved virtual machines inventory); SQL server discovery and assessment; 64-bit installation support; and Desktop Windows Security Center assessment,” revealed Baldwin Ng, Senior Product Manager, Solution Accelerators Team. Read More»
Posted in Hardware, Software, Windows Vista | 1 Comment »
