Raxco PerfectDisk Pro 14 Review

Full review

With more than 30 years of experience developing defragmentation utilities for personal hard drives and servers, Raxco Software has a solid reputation in this line of software. PerfectDisk, one of Raxco Software's most successful products, has already seen several releases. PerfectDisk , the latest version, offers plenty of new features that we were quite excited to try.

Setup

Installing PerfectDisk Pro is a pretty straightforward process. Since this software supports all versions of Windows from XP on, most users will be more than capable of meeting its system requirements. Also, since PerfectDisk Pro supports a wide range of hard drives, including SSD and USB drives, this disk-defragmentation tool should be more than capable of meeting most users' needs.

On our system, which runs a 64-bit version of Windows 10, this software installed in just a few minutes, and we encountered no issues throughout the installation process. Following installation, we launched PerfectDisk Pro and were greeted with its clean, easy-to-use interface.

Defragmentation

PerfectDisk Pro contains a whole host of defragmentation features. Combined, these powerful features make PerfectDisk Pro one of the most comprehensive disk-defragmentation products available.

Thanks to PerfectDisk Pros OptiWrite feature, disk fragmentation is actively prevented. This feature stops Windows from fragmenting data by redirecting the I/O. Not only does this automatically prevent hard-drive slowdowns, it saves time and energy. By actively preventing fragmentation from occurring, this feature makes it unnecessary to perform the disk-defragmentation process as often, a process that can easily take a significant amount of time on larger hard drives.

In addition to active fragmentation prevention, PerfectDisk Pro also optimizes users' systems during idle periods. This handy feature allows this software to perform many of the more resource-intensive tasks while users are away from their systems. It can even be configured to refrain from running during certain time periods or when certain applications are open. We were quite impressed by how easy it was to configure this feature in a manner that suited our computer-usage habits.

PerfectDisk Pro also has the ability to perform disk-defragmentation during the Windows startup. Thanks to this feature, PerfectDisk Pro can defragment several files that are typically locked by Windows once the startup process is complete.

Effectiveness

Following several days of usage and a few defrags, our system ran noticeably better. In fact, thanks to PerfectDisk Pro , nearly everything on our system ran faster and more reliably. Our high-resolution videos, for instance, opened quickly and played without stuttering. Also, while browsing the web with Chrome, we noticed less lagging and far fewer crashes.

Reporting

While PerfectDisk Pro does not feature any particularly detailed reports, it does present users with plenty of useful information. It has charts that display each drive's fragmentation levels, and it even lets users know how hot each drive is running. Finally, on the upper portion of the dashboard window, PerfectDrive Pro displays the number of fragments prevented and eliminated, and it also displays the total number of files defragmented.

Features

Boot-file optimization – PerfectDisk Pro's proprietary boot-file optimization reduces the time required for systems to startup. It is not uncommon for users to experience startup-speed increases of 20% or more when using this feature.

Scheduling calendar – This interactive calendar makes it easy for users to create and edit defragmentation tasks.

Ease of use

For the most part, PerfectDisk Pro is an easy-to-use utility. The majority of its interface is intuitive, and the process of setting up and running optimization tasks is pretty straightforward. In some areas, however, mainly in some of the software's deeper settings, an excess amount of options and information will probably confuse some users.

Help & support

Raxco Software provides customers of PerfectDisk Pro with a number of support options. Not only does their website feature an FAQ and an online community, user guides and updates are available to download. Also, for users with specific technical inquiries, the Raxco Software website has a section where users can submit their questions directly to support staff.

Overall

PerfectDisk Pro 14 has all of the tools needed to boost the performance of hard drives and increase their reliability. It is capable of performing most of its major functions automatically, but this software is still extremely customizable. PC users of all experience levels, from novices to experts, will appreciate the capabilities of PerfectDisk Pro.