Defragmentation+and+disk+utility+software

=Strand 3: IT Systems= =3.2 Software=

**Defragmentation**
Adding and deleting files from the hard disk is a common thing. Unfortunately this process is not always done very efficiently by the computer. For example when you delete a bunch of little files and add a new large file, the file may get broken up into different sections on the hard disk, this is called fragmenting. The computer still reads the new file as a single file, but has to scan multiple parts of the disk to read it. Because hard disk take a long time to look for the file this can slow down the computers preformance. So in order to get it back up to normal speed again it needs to be defragmented. In defragmentation the computer scans the hard disk and gathers all the files that belong together and puts them in the same place. The picture below shows how this is done; the different colours reprsent different files and the numbers represent the different parts of those files. As you can see when a hard disk is being defragmented it temporarily moves the files to a free part of the hard disk which creates space in the part where they were taken from, so that the same files can be put together which makes opening a lot faster.



Disk Utility Software
Utility software is a kind of system software designed to help analyze, configure, maintain and generally make the computer better. A single piece of utility software is usually called a utility or tool. There are many different types of disk utilities software’s here are some examples:
 * **Disk storage** utilities such as hard disks
 * **Disk defragmenters** can detect computer files whose contents are broken across several locations on the hard disk, and move the fragments to one location to increase efficiency.
 * **Disk checkers** can scan the contents of a hard disk to find files or areas that are corrupted in some way, or were not correctly saved, and eliminate them for a more efficiently operating hard drive.
 * **Disk cleaners** can find files that are unnecessary to computer operation, or take up considerable amounts of space. Disk cleaner helps the user to decide what to delete when their hard disk is full.
 * **Disk space analyzers** for the visualization of disk space usage by getting the size for each folder (including sub folders) & files in folder or drive. showing the distribution of the used space.
 * **Disk partitions** can divide an individual drive into multiple drives, each with its own file system which can be mounted by the operating system and treated as an individual drive. Hard disks are normally split with the operating systems being on one side of the hard disk and files on the other. This is done so that if a virus (which normally affect operating system) attacks the computer the files will not be corrupted.