Disk Usage If you have no idea whats on your hard drive, or how much of it exists, you have a fascinating and visually appealing way to find out-- Disk Space Fan.Since youre reading this, though, youre obviously not a most type of user.
Disk Utility Format Hard Drive And Pc Free Utilities ForHere are our ten favorite free utilities for partitioning, monitoring, and optimizing hard drives (as well as a few inexpensive for-pay alternatives).
Despite offering some high-end features, these downloadable programs wont bust your budget. Disk Utility Format Hard Drive And Pc For Free On EachFor links to all of the downloads in one convenient list, see our 10 Best Free Hard-Drive Utilities collection.) Partitioning Microsofts DiskPart --included for free on each Vista or Windows 7 installation disc--is a perfectly viable tool for manipulating FAT and NTFS partitions, but only if youre in a command-line kind of mood. The vast majority of the time, I want something fast and graphical that supports all file systems. Of all the partition utilities Ive reviewed, Parted Magic (now in version 6) remains my top pick--not only because it has the free Gnome partition tool (GParted), but also because it has Memtest86. Id say that I encounter about one memory problem for every three hard drive problems, so its nice to have that memory-diagnostic tool around. If you dont need memory testing, or if you just want an alternative Linux partitioning boot disc, GParted Live is a slightly lighter-weight boot disc that also supports booting from a USB flash drive or an external hard drive. You need to visit the command prompt twice during the boot process, but I have on occasion found that GParted Live boots when the Parted Magic disc will not--and vice versa. Offering an extremely small footprint and very quick boots, Partition Logic seems to work fine, at least with internal IDE drives. Disk Utility Format Hard Drive And Pc Professional In AppearanceMy other favorite freebie is Easeus Partition Manager Home: Its professional in appearance and has all the features I generally need. SMART (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology) Todays hard drives have a self-analysis feature that keeps tabs on the drives health. Unfortunately, although many BIOSs will relay the basic Hey, Im okay (or not) information to you when you boot the PC, Windows 7 doesnt provide a way to access the details. If you love the command line, SMART Monitoring Tools might be for you. In a DOS box, entering smartctl -a sda (or sdb, sdc, or the like) will tell you everything you need to know about your hard drives SMART status--if you can read the sometimes overlapping information. A better tool for viewing SMART information is Passmarks DiskCheckup. ![]() If you dont run your PC around the clock, this is a better approach. My absolute favorite, though, is the free version of HD Tune; it not only reports drive health (not specified as SMART but the same information nonetheless) but also tests drive performance and scans for disk errors. If you need constant Windows monitoring for a 247 PC, youll have to pay for a program such as Ariolic Softwares Active Smart 2.9 (30) or LSoft Technologies Active Hard Disk Monitor (6 and 15 Pro flavors). Defragging and Optimizing In days past (the age of FAT16 and FAT32), regularly defragging a hard drive made a noticeable difference in the speed with which it loaded applications and data--now, not as much. Even so, optimization--placing large, often-used files such as Outlook.pst files in the quickest-to-load location on your hard drive--can speed things up. For more about the defrag debate, see Defragging: Why, How, and Whether.) One great choice for optimization is an older public-domain version (1.72) of DiskTrix s excellent UltimateDefrag (though that version is now impossible to find at the vendors site). Despite its age, it still has all the features anyone could want, including the ability to choose individual files to move for faster access. The Smart Defrag utility has few user-configurable settings--you rely on the programs logic to automatically optimize your drive. It also shows an ad here or there, but the program works well and is smart enough to know that you cant optimize an SSD. UltraDefrag is another very capable defragging and optimizing program that you can run from a command prompt if you so desire.
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