It is not acceptable to force users off the disk while performing routine
defragmentation. To do so would be a case of the cure being worse than the
disease. Access to fragmented files is better than no access at all.
The best solution is to defragment online with users active on the same disk. Diskeeper was designed with this in mind. During most of the time Diskeeper is processing a file in its online mode, Diskeeper shares the file with any other users that may access the same file. The last step of processing the file, however, involves locking the file for a very brief period, a matter of milliseconds. If another user requests a file that Diskeeper has locked, that request is suspended for the brief period until Diskeeper releases the file. Then the request is serviced. There is never an interruption of either process as a result of this delay.
This solution allows Diskeeper to defragment open files safely, whether they are open for read operations or for write operations.
