Disk Fragmentation is becoming a bigger threat than viruses? You must be joking!

In the latest eWEEK paper edition, there is an advertisement that starts with the following: Why disk fragmentation is poised to outpace the virus as the biggest threat to productivity.

And it tries to prove this point by saying that viruses make our computers slower and making users frustrated and that so does the disk fragmentation.

Furthermore manual defragmentation (as bundled in at least 3 versions of Windows) is not good enough because the damage is already done. While can't link to the eWeek's ad, I found an online copy of it.

Now, I don't know about other people but I hate viruses because they

• Slow down my computer (ok, I may grant disk fragmentation that one)
  
• Actively resist uninstall attempts (hmm, defragmentation is never 100% complete either)
  
• Can destroy my files or even entire hard drive (disk fragmentation does not)
  
• Try to attack other computers (nope)
  
• Can steal my data and pass it on to the virus creators (nope, disk fragmentation does not cause this one either)
  

So basically, the Diskeeper Corporation/Executive Software (because that is who the ad is for) tries to scare people into buying full version of their software for something that is a minor annoyance. And with the ever-increasing hard drive sizes, the issue is becoming smaller and smaller.

I wonder if their sales are falling so low that they are starting to get desperate enough to use these scare tactics. Or is this just a normal part of their Scientology methodology?

Oh yeah, and if you expect any support from the company for the product, you may just find an unexpected complication. Worse than that, in the age of the automated web update, would you actually trust them? After all Germany does not.

BlogicBlogger Over and Out