Defraggler will report on the health of your hard drive, and is SSD-compatible. I recommend Defraggler from Piriform, which can defrag entire hard drives, individual files and folders, or the free space on your drive. ![]() But word on the street is that it's not exactly best of breed. Windows Vista, 7, 8 and 10 include a defragger which runs automatically. Optimization finds the pieces of fragmented files on your hard drive, re-assembles them, and places the most frequently used files in places where they can be more efficiently accessed. Generally, the less distance the drive’s read/write head has to move, the faster data will be read and written. It's a good alternative to using a 16-lb steel sledge hammer, a drill, and angle grinder (all of which I have gleefully employed on occasion).ĭefragmenting (defragging) and file optimization are related functions that keep data on your hard drive physically organized for the most efficient reading and writing. Eraser has a simple name but it erases files completely in several complex ways. It works with all versions of Windows, from Windows 95 through Windows 10. If you want to get rid of everything on a drive, in order to donate, sell, or safely dispose of it, try Eraser, a free utility for securely erasing data from a Windows hard drive. Privazer is my favorite utility for clean-up and privacy purposes it leaves a computer running like it’s fresh out of the box. If your computer is shared or you’re worried about spies, enabling this clean-up option will cover your tracks. In Windows, “recent files” history lists are kept by default, and every Web browser maintains histories of the URLs you have visited. ![]() Optionally, clean-up can include deleting traces of your computing and online activity to preserve your privacy. Another similar disk analysis tool is WinDirStat, which has versions for Linux and Mac as well. Backups will also be faster if unnecessary files are eliminated. I use JDiskReport several times a year, and I always find gobs of files that can be deleted. ![]() File inventory reporting utilities such as JDiskReport can find duplicate files so one can be deleted, or sort files in order of size to help you figure out where all that disk space is going. Please note, JDiskReport is a Java-based tool, so you'll need Java installed before it will work.Tune Up Your Hard Drive With Free SoftwareĬlean-up of unnecessary files and folders helps to keep your Master File Table nice and lean with fewer files and folders to index, it’s easier for the system to find what it needs at any given moment. While selecting "Types" shows you which file types are consuming the most space.Īnd a range of useful configuration options allow you to do everything from excluding particular folders from the report, to defining precisely how you'd like the charts to look. Clicking "Top 50" reveals the 50 largest files in the tree you're examining, for instance. ![]() The program does offer alternative views on your files, though. You'll have your own space hogs, of course, but JDiskReport should still expose them in just a few seconds. Why? Clicking any folder on the pie chart allows you to drill down, and in a click or two we found that the main culprit was a VirtualBox virtual machine setup, which required 30.1GB all on its own. So immediately we could see that, for instance, the Users folder was gobbling up the most hard drive space on our test system, at 69.1GB. Then you see the basic report, which shows you an Explorer-type view of your folders on the left, and a pie chart on the right revealing how much each one is taking up. This all starts by pointing the program at the folder tree you'd like it to examine, and it then spends a moment analysing your files (and only a moment, really - it's quite speedy, considering what the program has to do). JDiskReport is an excellent free Java tool which will scan your hard drive and provide a host of useful information about how its space is being used.
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