4 Hard Disk Utilities You Should Have to Pay For

Posted on 01. Jun, 2009 by JP.Thompson in Software, Windows

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Sometimes you to run into the case when you need a utility or two to keep your PC in tip-top shape.  Well, I ran into the case of needing four different utilities for fixing up my hard drive and for various reasons.

These utilities work so well that I’m surprised the authors and companies aren’t charging people for them!  Here are four great utilities for cleaning up, defragging, unlocking, and backing up your hard disk drive.

File Shredder

Have you ever needed to clean up an old hard drive in order to reuse it or to give it away in another PC for a family member? Did you worry about any hidden data on that hard drive?  Well, worry no more!  Just download File Shredder and let it do the cleaning for you.

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File Shredder will explicitly clean up files and folders, or can ensure that free disk space is really free of old data.  The utility has 5 algorithms for securely shredding your old files, including one that conforms to the Department of Defense cleaning standard (DoD 5220-22.M).

JkDefrag

JkDefrag is free GUI and command line hard disk defragger written by Jeroen Kessels that utilizes the built in Windows defragmentation API by Microsoft.  It is fast, safe, and can be easily scheduled to run at a time of your choosing (using Windows Task Scheduler.)

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JkDefrag has 3 modes of defragging that I’ve found useful: sort defrag, optimize based on last used, and just an optimized defrag.  This utility doesn’t have a lot of outward flash, but that’s because the author has spent time making sure the program works efficiently under the hood.

Unlocker

Unlocker is a simple little utility written by Cedrick Collomb that integrates with your Explorer to help you delete a file or folder that appears to be in use.

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You simply right-click on the locked file, select “Unlocker”, and the utility will tell you what programs are using the file or folder.  Unlocker then will allow you to clear all the locks or kill the processes with the locks.  I’ve also found that Unlocker will delete files that aren’t locked but wouldn’t delete through normal means.

SyncToy

SyncToy for Windows is a free Microsoft utility for synchronizing directory structures.  I have found that it is a very handy tool for backing up my hard drives to an external backup drive.

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When you first run SyncToy, it walks you through selecting directories to mirror using three different strategies: Synchronize, Echo, or Contribute.  Synchronize keeps two directories in sync and changes made in either folder affects both folders.  Echo sends all changes from one folder to another, and Contribute also sends changes except deletes.

Hopefully these utilities will be as handy for you as they were and are for me.  Feel free to post any other useful utilities in the comments below.

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2 Responses to “4 Hard Disk Utilities You Should Have to Pay For”

  1. Juscelino M. Acevedo

    01. Jun, 2009

    I have used two of these great utilities and although I agree with what you’re saying, don’t give these folks any ideas. LOL

    We need as many free utilities as possible.

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  2. Collin Condray

    01. Jun, 2009

    Don’t forget JDisk (http://www.jgoodies.com/freeware/jdiskreport/) and Duplicate File Finder (http://www.easyduplicatefinder.com/). I use these all the time.

    I hadn’t heard of Unlocker before. I’m constantly running into this problem. It should be a good fix.

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