A disk utility is a
utility program
Utility software is software designed to help analyze, configure, optimize or maintain a computer. It is used to support the computer infrastructure - in contrast to application software, which is aimed at directly performing tasks that benefit ord ...
that allows a user to perform various functions on a
computer disk, such as
disk partitioning
Disk partitioning or disk slicing is the creation of one or more regions on secondary storage, so that each region can be managed separately. These regions are called partitions. It is typically the first step of preparing a newly installed disk ...
and
logical volume management
In computer storage, logical volume management or LVM provides a method of allocating space on mass-storage devices that is more flexible than conventional partitioning schemes to store volumes. In particular, a volume manager can concatenate, ...
, as well as multiple smaller tasks such as changing
drive letter
In computer data storage, drive letter assignment is the process of assigning alphabetical identifiers to volume (computing), volumes. Unlike the concept of Unix filesystem, UNIX mount points, where volumes are named and located arbitrarily in a ...
s and other
mount point
Mounting is a process by which a computer's operating system makes files and directories on a storage device (such as hard drive, CD-ROM, or network share) available for users to access via the computer's file system.
In general, the process o ...
s, renaming volumes,
disk checking, and
disk formatting
Disk formatting is the process of preparing a data storage device such as a hard disk drive, solid-state drive, floppy disk, memory card or USB flash drive for initial use. In some cases, the formatting operation may also create one or more new fil ...
, which are otherwise handled separately by multiple other built-in
command
Command may refer to:
Computing
* Command (computing), a statement in a computer language
* COMMAND.COM, the default operating system shell and command-line interpreter for DOS
* Command key, a modifier key on Apple Macintosh computer keyboards
* ...
s. Each
operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...
(OS) has its own basic disk utility, and there are also separate programs which can recognize and adjust the different
filesystem
In computing, file system or filesystem (often abbreviated to fs) is a method and data structure that the operating system uses to control how data is stored and retrieved. Without a file system, data placed in a storage medium would be one larg ...
s of multiple OSes. Types of disk utilities include disk checkers, disk cleaners and disk space analyzers
Disk cleaners
![Bleachbituserinterface](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3c/Bleachbituserinterface.png)
Disk cleaners are computer programs that find and delete potentially unnecessary or potentially unwanted files from a computer. The purpose of such deletion may be to free up disk space, to eliminate clutter or to protect privacy.
Disk space consuming unnecessary files include
temporary file
A temporary file is a file created to store information temporarily, either for a program's intermediate use or for transfer to a permanent file when complete. It may be created by computer programs for a variety of purposes, such as when a program ...
s,
trash
Trash may refer to:
Garbage
* Garbage, unwanted or undesired waste material
** Litter, material discarded in inappropriate places
** Municipal solid waste, unwanted or undesired waste material generated in a municipal environment
Arts, enter ...
, old
backup
In information technology, a backup, or data backup is a copy of computer data taken and stored elsewhere so that it may be used to restore the original after a data loss event. The verb form, referring to the process of doing so, is "back up", w ...
s and
web cache
A Web cache (or HTTP cache) is a system for optimizing the World Wide Web. It is implemented both client-side and server-side. The caching of multimedias and other files can result in less overall delay when browsing the Web.
Parts of the syste ...
s made by web browsers. Privacy risks include
HTTP cookie
HTTP cookies (also called web cookies, Internet cookies, browser cookies, or simply cookies) are small blocks of data created by a web server while a user is browsing a website and placed on the user's computer or other device by the user's w ...
s,
local shared object
A local shared object (LSO), commonly called a Flash cookie (due to its similarity with an HTTP cookie), is a piece of data that websites that use Adobe Flash may store on a user's computer. Local shared objects have been used by all versions of ...
s,
log files
In computing, logging is the act of keeping a log of events that occur in a computer system, such as problems, errors or just information on current operations. These events may occur in the operating system or in other software. A message or lo ...
or any other trace that may tell which computer program opened which files.
Disk cleaners must not be mistaken with
antivirus software
Antivirus software (abbreviated to AV software), also known as anti-malware, is a computer program used to prevent, detect, and remove malware.
Antivirus software was originally developed to detect and remove computer viruses, hence the nam ...
(which delete
malware
Malware (a portmanteau for ''malicious software'') is any software intentionally designed to cause disruption to a computer, server, client, or computer network, leak private information, gain unauthorized access to information or systems, depri ...
),
registry cleaner A registry cleaner is a class of third-party utility software designed for the Microsoft Windows operating system, whose purpose is to remove redundant items from the Windows Registry.
Registry cleaners are not supported by Microsoft, but vendors o ...
s (which clean
Microsoft Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
Registry) or
data erasure
Data erasure (sometimes referred to as data clearing, data wiping, or data destruction) is a software-based method of overwriting the data that aims to completely destroy all electronic data residing on a hard disk drive or other digital media b ...
software (which securely delete files), although multifunction software (such as those included below) may fit into all these categories.
Disk compression utilities
A disk compression utility increases the amount of information that can be stored on a hard disk drive of given size. Unlike a
file compression
In information theory, data compression, source coding, or bit-rate reduction is the process of encoding information using fewer bits than the original representation. Any particular compression is either lossy or lossless. Lossless compression ...
utility which compresses only specified files – and which requires the user designate the files to be compressed – an on-the-fly disk compression utility works automatically without the user needing to be aware of its existence.
When information needs to be stored to the hard disk, the utility will compress the information. When information needs to be read, the utility will decompress the information. A disk compression utility overrides the standard operating system routines. Since all software applications access the hard disk using these routines, they continue to work after disk compression has been installed. The compression/expansion process adds a small amount of overhead to disk access and may complicate error recovery on the affected volume. Also, if the compression utility's device driver was uninstalled or became corrupted, all data on the disk would be lost.
Disk compression utilities were popular especially in the early 1990s, when microcomputer hard disks were still relatively small (20 to 80 megabytes).
Hard drives were also rather expensive at the time, costing roughly 10 USD per megabyte. For the users who bought disk compression applications, the software proved to be in the short term a more economic means of acquiring more disk space as opposed to replacing their current drive with a larger one. A good disk compression utility could, on average, double the available space with negligible speed loss. Disk compression fell into disuse by the late 1990s, as advances in hard drive technology and manufacturing led to increased capacities and lower prices.
Some examples of disk compression utilities:
*
DriveSpace
DriveSpace (initially known as DoubleSpace) is a disk compression utility supplied with MS-DOS
MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mo ...
for
Microsoft Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
*
DiskDoubler
DiskDoubler (DD) is a data compression utility for compressing files on the Apple Macintosh platform. Unlike most such programs, which compresses numerous files into a single archive for transmission, DiskDoubler is intended to compress single fil ...
for
Macintosh
The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and ...
*
SquashFS
Squashfs is a compressed read-only file system for Linux. Squashfs compresses files, inodes and directories, and supports block sizes from 4 KiB up to 1 MiB for greater compression. Several compression algorithms are supported. Squashfs is al ...
for
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...
Disk checkers
![Chkdsk screenshot](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d0/Chkdsk_screenshot.png)
A disk checker is a utility program which can scan a
hard disk
A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magnet ...
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. This is not to be confused with a
disk cleaner
A disk utility is a utility software, utility program that allows a user to perform various functions on a computer disk, such as disk partitioning and logical volume management, as well as multiple smaller tasks such as changing drive letters an ...
, which can find files that are unnecessary for computer operation, or take up considerable amounts of space.
Some disk checkers can perform a whole surface scan to attempt to find any possible
bad sector A bad sector in computing is a disk sector on a disk storage unit that is permanently damaged. Upon taking damage, all information stored on that sector is lost. When a bad sector is found and marked, the operating system like Windows or Linux will ...
s, whereas others scan only the logical structure of files on the hard disk.
Operating systems often include one such tool. For example:
*
CHKDSK
In computing, CHKDSK (short for "check disk") is a system tool and command in DOS, Digital Research FlexOS, IBM/Toshiba 4690 OS, IBM OS/2, Microsoft Windows and related operating systems. It verifies the file system integrity of a volume and at ...
*
fsck
The system utility fsck (''file system consistency check'') is a tool for checking the consistency of a file system in Unix and Unix-like operating systems, such as Linux, macOS, and FreeBSD. A similar command, CHKDSK, exists in Microsoft Windows ...
Disk layout tools
Disk formatting
Disk formatting is the process of preparing a data storage device such as a hard disk drive, solid-state drive, floppy disk, memory card or USB flash drive for initial use. In some cases, the formatting operation may also create one or more new fil ...
and
disk partitioning
Disk partitioning or disk slicing is the creation of one or more regions on secondary storage, so that each region can be managed separately. These regions are called partitions. It is typically the first step of preparing a newly installed disk ...
tools are responsible for generating low level disk layouts and
file system
In computing, file system or filesystem (often abbreviated to fs) is a method and data structure that the operating system uses to control how data is stored and retrieved. Without a file system, data placed in a storage medium would be one larg ...
s. Operating systems typically supply one or more programs performing these functions as part of their standard install:
In Windows:
*
Logical Disk Manager
The Logical Disk Manager (LDM) is an implementation of a logical volume manager for Microsoft Windows NT, developed by Microsoft and Veritas Software. It was introduced with the Windows 2000 operating system, and is supported in Windows XP, Wind ...
*
format
Format may refer to:
Printing and visual media
* Text formatting, the typesetting of text elements
* Paper formats, or paper size standards
* Newspaper format, the size of the paper page
Computing
* File format, particular way that informatio ...
*
fdisk
In computing, the fdisk command-line utility provides disk-partitioning functions, preparatory to defining file systems. fdisk features in the DOS, DR FlexOS, IBM OS/2, and Microsoft Windows operating systems, and in certain ports of FreeBS ...
*
diskpart
In computing, diskpart is a command-line disk partitioning utility included in Windows 2000 and later Microsoft operating systems, replacing its predecessor, fdisk. The command is also available in ReactOS.
Overview
The diskpart is a utility ...
In Mac OS:
*
Disk Utility
A disk utility is a utility program that allows a user to perform various functions on a computer disk, such as disk partitioning and logical volume management, as well as multiple smaller tasks such as changing drive letters and other mount poi ...
In Linux:
*
Logical Volume Manager
In computer storage, logical volume management or LVM provides a method of allocating space on mass-storage devices that is more flexible than conventional partitioning schemes to store volumes. In particular, a volume manager can concatenate ...
*
GNOME Disks
GNOME Disks is a graphical front-end for udisks. It can be used for partition management, S.M.A.R.T. monitoring, benchmarking, and software RAID (until v. 3.12). An introduction is included in the GNOME Documentation Project.
Disks used to be ...
(also known as Disks or gnome-disk-utility or palimpsest)
*
GNU Parted
GNU Parted (the name being the conjunction of the two words PARTition and EDitor) is a free partition editor, used for creating and deleting partitions. This is useful for creating space for new operating systems, reorganising hard disk usage, co ...
Disk space analyzers
![GNOME Disk Usage Analyzer 3](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/56/GNOME_Disk_Usage_Analyzer_3.32_screenshot.png)
A disk space analyzer (or disk usage analysis software) is a
software utility
Utility software is software designed to help analyze, configure, optimize or maintain a computer. It is used to support the computer infrastructure - in contrast to application software, which is aimed at directly performing tasks that benefit ord ...
for the visualization of
disk
Disk or disc may refer to:
* Disk (mathematics), a geometric shape
* Disk storage
Music
* Disc (band), an American experimental music band
* ''Disk'' (album), a 1995 EP by Moby
Other uses
* Disk (functional analysis), a subset of a vector sp ...
space usage by getting the size for each
folder (including sub-folders) and
files in a folder or drive. Most of these applications analyze this information to generate a graphical chart showing disk usage distribution according to folders or other user defined criteria.
Some disk space analyzers like DiskReport allow analysis of history of size and file count for each folder, to help find growing folders.
Examples:
* Directory Report
* WizTree
* DiskReport
* GNOME
Disk Usage Analyzer
Disk Usage Analyzer is a graphical disk usage analyzer for GNOME. It was part of GNOME Core Applications, but was split off for GNOME 3.4. It was originally named Baobab after the ''Adansonia'' tree. The software gives the user a menu-driven, grap ...
* KDE
Filelight
Filelight is a graphical disk usage analyzer part of the KDE Gear.
Instead of showing a tree view of the files within a partition or directory, or even a columns-represent-directories view like ''xdiskusage'', it shows a series of concentric p ...
*
WinDirStat
WinDirStat is a free and open-source graphical disk usage analyzer for Microsoft Windows. It presents a sub-tree view with disk-use percentage alongside a usage-sorted list of file extensions that is interactively integrated with a colorful graphi ...
*
SpaceSniffer
SpaceSniffer is a freeware computer disk space analyser from Uderzo Software for Microsoft Windows platforms. It uses a treemap to visualise disk usage.
__TOC__
History
Developed by Uderzo Software (run by Umberto Uderzo) in Italy, SpaceSnif ...
References
{{Disk space analyzers
Disk partitioning software
Hard disk software