When IBM (now Lenovo) designed their first Thinkpad Tablet PC based on Windows XP they built it in the solid Thinkpad tradition, except for one fairly critical item; the disk drive. The disk drive is a proprietary 2.5" 5400RPM 60GB drive which I have found does not perform very well. It has been the bottleneck in an otherwise excellent machine. The 2 biggest issues I have are bringing the system back up from a suspend and flipping the screen in tablet mode. Both of these activities seem to take an inordinate amount of disk access time and essentially locks up the machine. Once the drive settles down everything is fine. Back over the summer I decided to purchase Diskeeper to try to improve disk access time. Diskeeper did improve disk response time, however the scheduling mechanism left a lot to be desired. I scheduled Diskeeper to run at night, however since I am so use to suspend my machine at night the task did not run every night.
Recently Diskeeper released their 2007 version. This version has made a huge difference. Diskeeper 2007 has a feature called InvisiTasking which continually defrags the disk while not impacting system resources. It really works very well and I can highly recommend it.
The Diskeeper Microsoft Management Console (MMC) plug in showing the number of fragments eliminated and total number of fragments.
The only problem I have is that the MMC plug in does not shut down correctly and I have to terminate it manually or it can cause XP to become unstable. Since the system runs well I seldom use the MMC and have not tracked down the source of the problem.
Thanks for the great tip to Diskeeper. Last year I switched from a 3-year-old T40 to an X41. Disk read speed has been an issue for me from the beginning, sometimes 30 seconds or more before getting prompted to swipe my finger (using fingerprint reader instead of entering password) and then another 30 seconds or so to get to my desktop, which seems like an eternity. And that with Windows telling me my disk is already defragmented... Running Diskeeper now, hoping it clears up those issues.
Now if I could just have a better graphics card to get 1280x1024 resolution to fit more on this nice small screen... ;)
So how often do you get, "Oh my GOD! Your computer's tiny!"?
Posted by: Chris | December 05, 2006 at 06:24 AM
Make sure you run the boot time defragment, this will clean up you Master File Table (MFT). Mine was in two fragments which slows down file access considerably.
I had the same symptoms as you and now although not instantenous it is much better. The latest set of Lenovo drivers seem to help as well. I find the fingerprint reader to be more responsive. Although it may just be me learning that I have to pass my finger straight and slow over the reader.
Yes, I do get the comment about the size of the X41, especially when I sitting at table with other laptops.
Posted by: Stephen Skarlatos | December 05, 2006 at 05:29 PM
Wow, I guess I spoke too soon about Diskeeper. Spent the past 2 days piecing everything back together, thought I was going to have to do a re-core... I did the MFT defrag and there the problems began. Either the data was a mess in the first place or Diskeeper really did some damage. On the next boot after the defrag I got the blue screen before Windows starts and saw all the files it was moving and then deleting. It looked like part of the Diskeeper process... Anyway, when I booted up Symantec Security was disabled, Windows Defender was disabled, my ost file in Outlook had to be rebuilt, my browser settings were lost, VPN connections deleted, Quicken data became corrupt, IM client (Trillian) was deleted etc. And all this happened, of course, while in Toronto on business, with a client presentation the next day. I was able to recover the presentation I had to deliver and then spent all day today running Check Disk, driver updates, Windows updates etc. and then reinstalling apps that were deleted or corrupted. Since I didn't do anything different and since Housecall didn't find any viruses or other malicious files I can only attribute this to Diskeeper. Well, I think I'll uninstall now. Too bad, since the initial performance increases were nice... Thought you'd like to know, in case anyone else has trouble.
Posted by: Chris | December 08, 2006 at 07:27 PM
Chris - you might want to check out www.perfectdisk.com, it not only defragments the MFT, but also all the metadata. I guess it's a matter of preference, but I like PerfectDisk (used to use Diskeeper).
Posted by: Jon | December 11, 2006 at 11:35 AM
Chris,
I was sorry to hear that Diskeeper 2007 corrupted your file system. I sent an email to your registered email account with a sales contact that I got from a Diskeeper marketing email.
Perfectdisk is a new one for me, I will have to check it out.
Posted by: Stephen Skarlatos | December 11, 2006 at 04:45 PM
Hi, my name is Colleen Toumayan and I am the VP of Public Relations at
Diskeeper Corporation.
Please contact our exceptional tech support team at
[email protected] to help you.
Posted by: Colleen Toumayan | February 09, 2007 at 02:14 PM