Although many corporate computer users have no clue about it, IT personnel duties extend far beyond recovering a lost file, assisting the new person to log in, or setting up that new email account. IT is responsible for system-wide implementation of necessary programs, upgrade and maintenance of all hardware, operating system and software upgrades, updates and patches, researching new technology and much more in an effort to keep the company automation running smoothly. Most of the time, there aren’t enough hours in the day (and/or enough qualified personnel in the IT department) to accomplish all that needs to be done, and work schedules stretch into nights and weekends.
In order to keep computer running at optimum speed, defragmenting disks is of paramount importance. Today’s operating systems and applications fragment files at fantastic rates, and often recently installed software fragments drives immediately. Unless fragmentation is dealt with properly system performance suffers dramatically. A system administrator can’t just defragment whenever fragmentation gets bad–there are users on the system, and most defragmenters slow down performance while they are running. What’s to be done?
The answer for many years has been scheduled defragmentation; the system is analyzed for heaviest fragmentation rates, then schedules are set up so defragmenters can hopefully run often enough to keep fragmentation in some sort of check. But who is doing all this analysis and scheduling, and also frequently checking to make sure the scheduling plan is still valid? That would be the already-overtaxed IT personnel, who are already behind and overloaded in servicing users. The hours it takes for the scheduling defragmentation are further robbing IT of the hours needed for such service.
Additionally with the advent of many servers at many sites having to be operational and accessible 24X7, the windows of opportunity for defragmenters to run are disappearing. That means that whenever a defragmenter runs, performance for users is going to suffer while it is running. This is also a disservice to users.
The only answer is a fully automatic defragmenter that works in the background using only idle resources to handle fragmentation as it happens without affecting performance. Such a defragmenter requires no scheduling–giving precious time back IT personnel so that they can service users and keep a company’s system running smoothly.
