DisksTools

DisksTools

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In addition to the tools for managing disks in WS2003, you can also use the diskpart and defrag commands to manage and defragment volumes and partitions from the command line or to schedule disk-management tasks .

Disk Management

Disk Management, a snap-in that is part of Computer Management, is the primary tool for managing disks on local or remote computers. It can be used to add and remove disks, create and manage partitions and volumes, change drive letters , mount volumes, create fault-tolerant volumes, configure disk quotas, and so on. The way Disk Management displays information can be changed using the View menu as follows .

View Top

Lets you display one of three views in the top portion of the righthand pane

Disk List

Provides information about the physical disks (hard drives, CD-ROM drives , and so on) in your system

Volume List

Provides information about the partitions, volumes, and logical drives on your hard disks

Graphical View

Shows information about the partitions, volumes, and logical drives on your disks using color -coded regions

View Bottom

Lets you do the same and also lets you hide the bottom pane entirely, which is useful if you have a lot of disks or volumes on your system

View Settings

Lets you change the color coding and horizontal scaling of the regions in Graphical view

View All Drive Paths

Displays any drive paths (volume mount points) on a disk system that is configured for dynamic storage

Disk Defragmenter

This snap-in, also part of Computer Management, lets you manually defragment disks on the local computer to improve performance. Fragmentation is generally less of an issue with NTFS volumes than with FAT or FAT32 volumes since NTFS usually needs fewer disk accesses than FAT to locate all the fragments of a file. However, a significant performance improvement in disk access can be achieved by regularly defragmenting all volumes and partitions, including NTFS volumes and partitions, on a WS2003 computer. Disk Defragmenter achieves this performance gain by:

• Consolidating fragments of files and folders by moving them to one location so that each file and folder occupies a contiguous segment of space on the volume. Disk Defragmenter consolidates all fragments of each file into a single contiguous block of space, but different files may occupy different blocks of contiguous space after defragmentation. In other words, Disk Defragmenter doesn't cause all files on the volume to be grouped into a single contiguous region of space on the disk.

• Consolidating free space to make it less likely that new files become fragmented . Disk Defragmenter typically doesn't attempt to completely consolidate all free space on the volume, however, since this generally provides little improvement in performance.

You can run Disk Defragmenter in two modes:

Analysis

Determines the amount of file fragmentation present and indicates whether defragmenting the disk is worthwhile. After analyzing a volume, the Analysis Display graphic box displays the volume's initial state of fragmentation using the color-coded legend at the bottom of the screen.

Defragmentation

Defragments the disk and displays the progress in the Defragmentation Display graphic box.

You can pause or stop the analysis or defragmentation process at any time. Both the analysis and defragmentation processes produce reports you can view, save, and print. Note that only the report gives an accurate view of the defragmentation state of the volume; the graphical displays are only approximate since they can't resolve individual clusters into colored regions due to screen-resolution limits.

Although it is possible to use your computer while a disk is being defragmented, this is generally not a good idea as the system will be slow to respond due to the overhead of the defragmentation process. Making changes to files during defragmentation can also considerably lengthen the defragmentation process. Instead, pause or stop defragmentation, perform the work you have to do, and then restart defragmentation.

Disk Cleanup

This utility can be used to delete unnecessary files from your disks, including temporary files, cached web pages, downloaded ActiveX controls, and so on. It can also be used to empty the Recycle Bin, compress files you haven't accessed for some time, and uninstall optional Windows components or applications you no longer need. The net result is more free space on your disk. To start Disk Cleanup, use one of the following methods :

Start Programs Accessories System Disk Cleanup

Windows Explorer or My Computer right-click on a drive Properties General Disk Cleanup

Computer Management Storage Disk Management right-click on a drive Properties General Disk Cleanup

Command prompt cleanmgr

Error Checking

This option runs the Check Disk ( chkdisk ) command to scan a disk for possible damage. If you are encountering unknown data errors when reading files, you can try running this utility by:

Windows Explorer or My Computer right-click on a drive Properties Tools Error Checking

Computer Management Storage Disk Management right-click on a drive Properties Tools Error Checking

Command prompt chkdsk