A disk, whether it's a traditional mechanical one or a new solid-state drive, is one of the most important parts of the PC. It stores the operating system, software and files like documents, photos, music and so on. It can be expected to work reliably for many years, but while the hardware may be trouble-free fot most people, the filing system certainly isn't. You need to know how to check the disk for errors and repair any that are found, otherwise little problems can grow into bigger ones.
New disks, or even old ones if there's sufficient free space, can be partitioned to enable files to be organised in a more efficient or orderly manner. A well used disk must be optimised for speed, decluttered and space cleared to prevent it from filling up. You need to know what's using all the space on an old disk drive that's nearly full and how to erase disks when they're finished with and headed for the bin or recycling point.
The disk is a key component, and there are lots of tools to help you to manage it. Let's start by seeing how to check them for errors.
New disks, or even old ones if there's sufficient free space, can be partitioned to enable files to be organised in a more efficient or orderly manner. A well used disk must be optimised for speed, decluttered and space cleared to prevent it from filling up. You need to know what's using all the space on an old disk drive that's nearly full and how to erase disks when they're finished with and headed for the bin or recycling point.
The disk is a key component, and there are lots of tools to help you to manage it. Let's start by seeing how to check them for errors.
Check For Faults
The disk drive contains hundreds of thousands of files, and it's surprising how many the operating system must manage. If you want to count the number of files on the disk drive, press windows+R and enter cmd. Type 'dir Is’, and sit back and watch as thousands of files scroll by. When it's finished, the total files listed figure is at the bottom. A clean installation of Windows is around 50,000, and a well used PC could have hundreds of thousands.
Glitches in the mains power supply to the computer can cause corruption in files that are being written to the disk or are open and in use. Programs that crash can leave partially written files in a damaged state, and bugs in programs or Windows can cause files to be stored wrongly on the disk filing system.
Disk drives often have errors, but some are so minor that windows carries on regardless and doesn't even report them. You could be using a PC that has errors without realising it. Small problems can accumulate, though, and as they build up, they can become more serious, so it's best to frequently check for errors and fix them before they can do any damage.
Glitches in the mains power supply to the computer can cause corruption in files that are being written to the disk or are open and in use. Programs that crash can leave partially written files in a damaged state, and bugs in programs or Windows can cause files to be stored wrongly on the disk filing system.
Disk drives often have errors, but some are so minor that windows carries on regardless and doesn't even report them. You could be using a PC that has errors without realising it. Small problems can accumulate, though, and as they build up, they can become more serious, so it's best to frequently check for errors and fix them before they can do any damage.
Open an Explorer window and select Computer on the left. Right-click the disk drive and select Properties. Click Check Now in the Error-checking section on the Tools tab. If you're running Windows 7, Vista or XP, tick the option to ‘Automatically fix file system errors’ and click Start. Select the option to check for errors the next time you start Windows, and then shut down and restart.
Nearly all disk errors are filing system problems, where Windows has lost track of files or corrupted the data. when the disk drive hardware begins to fail, though, some parts of the disk surface can become difficult or impossible to read. The option to ‘Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors‘ checks the disk surface sector by sector and marks bad ones so they won't be used again. If possible, data is copied from bad sectors and stored elsewhere in good sectors. This option is rarely needed, but if you use it, be aware that it can take several hours to complete.
Microsoft has improved this repair tool in Windows 8, and it can scan for and repair faults without needing to restart. when the repair tool is selected, Windows 8 may say that the disk is okay. Ignore the message and click the option to scan the disk for errors anyway. However, it doesn't offer the surface scan option to check for bad sectors. To do this, press windows+R and enter cmd. At the command prompt enter ‘chkdsk c: /r‘.
CheckDisk is a freeware utility that displays more information about the health of the disk drive and errors than Windows. It lists the tests performed, files that have errors, the number of files and disk space used and so on. It's useful if you want to see detailed disk health reports.
S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology is incorporated into all modern disk drives, and it's exactly what the name says: it monitors the drive and stores reports that can be viewed with the right software. Crystaloisklnfo displays the drive temperature, number of hours powered on, number of times it has been powered up and other data. The general drive information is useful, but interpreting the S.M.A.R.T. data isn't easy. Run it occasionally and watch for worsening figures indicating increasing errors.
Acronis Drive Monitor monitors the S.M.A.R.T. information on the disk drive, but it doesn't show it. Instead, it runs in the bad<ground and alerts you only when there's a problem. You can set it and forget it. You can even install it on another PC and configure it to email you when there's a problem with the drive. In a total failure it wouldn't work, of course, because Windows would stop running, but the idea is that it can alert you to worsening problems before they become critical.
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| Monitor the disk drIw‘s health using Acronis Drive Monitor |
Solid-state drives (SSDS) suffer from many of the problems of traditional disks, because most of the time it's the filing system that goes wrong and not the hardware. Fixing filing system faults has been covered, but what about the hardware? If you want to monitor the state of the SSD in your PC, one utility to consider is SSD Life. It displays the data read and written to the drive, the estimated lifetime, the number of times it has been powered up and so on. It's similar to the S.M.A.R.T. tools used with mechanical disk drives.
Measure Performance
The reason why SSDs are becoming so popular is because mechanical disk drives are the limiting factor in terms of performance. A computer would operate a lot quicker if it didn't have to slow down and wait for the disk drive to read or write data. Just how fast or slow is the disk drive in your PC? There are tools to measure this, such as HD Tune. There's a Pro version, but the free one is all you need to measure the performance. The results are meaningless in isolation, so this is best if you have access to several PCs to compare. There are also websites with published test results too.
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| How fast is the disk drive? Measure the performance with HD Tune |
Other disk performance tools include ATTO Disk Benchmark and Crysta|DiskMark. ATTO's tool can be used for SSDs, RAID arrays and other disk configurations. and the company says it's the one disk drive manufacturers like Hitachi use to test drives.
Recover Files
Sometimes files can become corrupted, but it may be possible to recover some of the data with the right tools. One example is Zip Repair, which attempts to fix corrupted zip archives. Whether anything can be recovered depends on the degree of damage, but it is worth trying.
When files are being copied from one place to another - such as one folder to another, a USB drive to an internal drive, a CD to a disk drive and so on - Windows tends to give up at the first error. Unstoppable Copier never gives up, which can enable it to copy files even when they're corrupt. Corrupt files are not repaired, but Unstoppable Copier continues past the problem and copies any good files that follow it.
If you copy files from one folder or disk drive to another, how do you know whether they're okay? Could files copied from a USB flash memory drive or over a network be corrupt? TeraCopy is designed to copy files faster than Windows Explorer; and in addition to this, it calculates a checksum for each file copied and compares it to the original to make sure they're the same. If any files are corrupt, it skips them and copies the rest. This is an improvement on Explorer's file copying facilities.
If files have been lost or accidentally deleted, it's sometimes possible to recover them, but only if the right tools are installed on the disk drive. It's important to install file recovery tools before you have a problem and then use them as soon as possible. Going online and downloading software to the disk drive after you've discovered lost or deleted files can prevent them from being recovered. Download and install EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard and Piriform Recuva now while your PC is okay. Both utilities can scan or deep scan the disk drive to reveal lost or deleted files. Provided the part of the disk containing the data has not been overwritten, files can be recovered. Don't save them on the drive you're working on, because one recovered file may overwrite the next one you want to recover.
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| Install Easeus Data Rocowty and use It to find accidentally deleted files |
There are many more recovery tools, such as Wise Data Recovery, Undelete 360, Pandora Recovery and so on, but they all tend to be very similar. You scan the disk, browse the list of files and select the ones you want to recover.
Defragment The Disk
Windows XP had a disk defragmenter that was a pain to use. You had to know where it was on the Start menu. you had to run it manually, and it took a long time to complete. Some people rarely ran it, so disk performance suffered. Windows 8's disk defragmenter is even harder to find, and Microsoft has all but made it invisible. However, it runs automatically and defragments the disk in the background without user interaction. This doesn't mean that disk defragmenters are redundant. It's possible to improve on the built-in tool and further optimise the disk drive and boost performance.
Defraggler from Piriform, the maker of Ccleaner, is one option. This tool enables you to scan the disk and view a fragmentation report that lists the fragmented files and the number of fragments in each one. A disk map shows fragmentation visually using coloured bloclcs, and the percentage and size of fragmented files is shown. There are defrag and quick defrag options, and the option to defragment before Windows starts so that files that are normally in use can be accessed. A schedule can be set and the disk defragmented daily, weekly, on start-up and so on.
The best free disk defragmenter is IObit Smart Defrag, which is an excellent utility for keeping the disk drive contents optimised. it operates in the background, and when the computer is idle it will automatically defragment the disk if the fragmentation is over 1%. There's also an option to always defragment, so as soon as it spots a fragmented file, it defragments it.
The best free disk defragmenter is IObit Smart Defrag, which is an excellent utility for keeping the disk drive contents optimised. it operates in the background, and when the computer is idle it will automatically defragment the disk if the fragmentation is over 1%. There's also an option to always defragment, so as soon as it spots a fragmented file, it defragments it.
It can detect laptops running on battery power and automatically put off defragmenting until it's back on mains power. It will also pause defragmentation if the computer is busy, such as when you're playing games. It offers several defragmentation options like defrag and either fast or fully optimise, and boot time defragmentation for files in use. It's almost as good as commercial defragmenters.
De-duplicate The Disk
Many disk drives contain duplicate files, and there may be two, three or even more of some files. This can happen when transferring photos to your computer and editing them, syncing with online storage, backing up, transferring files to a new computer and so on.
CloneSpy is a useful tool for tracking down duplicate files of all types. It enables you to select one or more folders to be scanned. These can be on the same disk drive or different ones, so you could choose the Pictures folder on the PC and a Photos folder on a USB disk drive, for example. It can ignore filenames and still find duplicate files when they have different names and dates, and files with the same name, but different contents will not fool it. This is excellent, and the numerous options for handling duplicates, such as sending them to another folder or the Recycle Bin so you can undo the changes, are good.
Auslogics Duplicate File Finder is another useful and free tool for tracking down file duplicates on the disk drive.
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Partition And Format
Disks can be divided into two or more partitions that each act as if they're separate disks. This could be used to organise data or reserve areas of the disk for special purposes. For example, Windows creates a hidden partition for system files, and there may be another that's used as a recovery partition for performing a factory reset.
To access Windows partitioning and formatting tool, go to the Start menu or Start screen and enter ‘disk management’, then click ‘Create and format hard disk partitions’. A list of disks and partitions is displayed in the top half of the window, and a graphical layout is drawn below. One partition is marked as Primary in the Status column, and this contains Windows. Some or all of the others may be hidden from Explorer.
The Primary partition containing windows can be resized and made smaller. If drive C 2 is 600GB, for example, it could be shrunk to 40068, and 200GB could be configured as a new partition to store music, videos or photos. Right-click drive C: in the Disk Management window and select Shrink > Volume. The amount it can be shrunk depends on where the last file is located. Disk Management allows you to shrink the partition to just past the last immovable file. You can enter any value up to the maximum displayed and click Shrink.
Afterwards, unallocated space is shown in the disk's partition map. Right-click it and select New Simple Volume. Accept all the defaults to assign a drive letter and to format it as NTFS. The new partition appears as a new disk in Explorer after a few seconds and is ready to use. Occasionally, windows accidentally assigns the same drive letter to a drive as an existing one. Right-click a drive or partition (not C:, though) and select 'Change drive letter and paths’.
The Primary partition containing windows can be resized and made smaller. If drive C 2 is 600GB, for example, it could be shrunk to 40068, and 200GB could be configured as a new partition to store music, videos or photos. Right-click drive C: in the Disk Management window and select Shrink > Volume. The amount it can be shrunk depends on where the last file is located. Disk Management allows you to shrink the partition to just past the last immovable file. You can enter any value up to the maximum displayed and click Shrink.
Afterwards, unallocated space is shown in the disk's partition map. Right-click it and select New Simple Volume. Accept all the defaults to assign a drive letter and to format it as NTFS. The new partition appears as a new disk in Explorer after a few seconds and is ready to use. Occasionally, windows accidentally assigns the same drive letter to a drive as an existing one. Right-click a drive or partition (not C:, though) and select 'Change drive letter and paths’.
Although Windows Disk Management tool can shrink partitions and create new ones, it cannot extend them or move them. Disk Partition Expert and Partition Wizard can. Suppose you have three partitions. C:, D: and E2. If E: became full, but there's still lots of space on C:\, you could shrink C: a bit more to create unallocated space, then move D: and E: so the free space is now after E:. Partition E: could then be extended and the unallocated space added to make it bigger. This is impossible in windows, but it's the sort of trick that can be performed quite easily in Disk Partition Expert and Partition Wizard.
Compress The Disk
If you're running short of disk space, the best solution is to add another drive. A USB 3.0 drive is the best, but USB 2.0 are fine for backups, photo archives and other files you use only occasionally. Another option is to compress the disk contents. This is not the same as adding files to a zip archive, and the disk and contents appear unchanged. However, windows compresses files that are written to the disk and decompresses them when they're read, all on the fly at super fast speeds. There must be a slight performance hit, because extra work is being done, but you probably won't notice it, and you'll have more disk space for your files.
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| Disk partition expert can move partitions and extend them |
Open an Explorer window and select Computer on the left. Right-click any disk or partition and select Properties. Tick the box at the bottom to compress the contents, and then choose the option to apply the changes to all subfolders. There are two visible changes: file and folder names are blue to indicate they are compressed, and if you right-click the disk and select Properties, the amount of space used is less than it was before. Zips JPEGS and some other files don't compress very much, so the amount of space gained depends on the disk contents.
Erase Disks Securely
As we saw earlier, it's possible to recover deleted files. This is because deleted files are added to the free space on the disk, and the space they occupy is not immediately overwritten. Deleted files can sometimes remain on the disk for a long time. B|eachBit is a general Windows clean-up tool, but it can also be used to erase the free space on a disk, which overwrites all deleted files so they can never be recovered. It's a slow process that can take a long time, so run this overnight if there's a lot of space to erase.
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| wiztree shows which folders are consuming the most disk space |
Slimcleaner is another general clean-up utility, but in the Disk Tools section is a useful Disk Wiper. There is an option to erase the free space or the whole disk with one, seven or 35 passes. The Windows boot disk cannot be erased when Windows is running, though. To do this you need to boot up another operating system.
Darik's Boot and Nuke (DBAN) is the best known utility for completely erasing a disk drive. DBAN is a .iso file that you burn to a CD, which can then be used to boot the PC. Although it boots up to a command prompt, it's straightforward to use because it has just one function and that's to erase disks. Any popular Linux distro you can boot the PC with can be used to erase the internal disk drive. Open a Terminal window and enter 'sudo fdisk -I‘ to list all the disks and then 'sudo shred -v /dev/sdb’ (replace sdb with whatever the disk is called).
Encrypt The Disk
Windows 7 and 8 Pro have the ability to encrypt a disk drive using Bittocker. This means that if someone stole your PC or laptop, they would not be able to access the disk contents. Go to the Control Panel and open Bittocker to activate it. wlndovvs 8.1 has a new Device Encryption feature too. Go to the Charms on the right and click Settings, Change PC settings. Go to PCs and Devices, PC Info. Not all windows computers support it, but if they do. there's an option to turn encryption on or off. Microsoft plans to make Device Encryption a standard feature and turned on by default on all new computers, but not all hardware supports it at the moment.
If you don't have either BitLocker or Device Encryption, Diskcryptor is one option. It can encrypt the Windows boot disk, and it has been specially optimised for Intel Core i5 and i7 processors, so there's no loss of speed when reading and writing to the disk. To be safe, you should create a full disk backup before encrypting the disk, just in case something should go wrong. It's very unlikely, but it's better to be safe. Don't forget that backups of files from encrypted disks are themselves unencrypted.
If you don't have either BitLocker or Device Encryption, Diskcryptor is one option. It can encrypt the Windows boot disk, and it has been specially optimised for Intel Core i5 and i7 processors, so there's no loss of speed when reading and writing to the disk. To be safe, you should create a full disk backup before encrypting the disk, just in case something should go wrong. It's very unlikely, but it's better to be safe. Don't forget that backups of files from encrypted disks are themselves unencrypted.
Visualize The Disk Contents
The disk drive fills up over time, and old PCs have smaller disks than they do today. They can easily run out of space, and the question is: where has it all gone? WizTree is a useful tool that can provide the answer. After scanning the disk, there are two tabs. the first of which shows an Explorer-like tree structure. This one, though, has columns that show the size, number of files and number of folders. The folders are sorted by size automatically. The second tab shows the top 1,000 largest files on the disk drive. If you want to free up some disk space fast, you should look to the files on this list. It's a great utility.
WinDirStat shows a similar table with folders, sizes, number of files and so on. However, it also displays the disk contents visually. Files are shown as coloured rectangles, and their size indicates the amount of disk space used. As the mouse passes over them, the filename is shown in the windows status bar. You might prefer this colourful visual file map to the dull figures.
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