Format Scandisk Defragmentation Antivirus Compression Software Utility Software Format Scandisk Defragmentation Antivirus Compression Software

What is Utility Software? Utility software comes with the operating system It is used to analyse, configure and maintain the computer. The utility software has many different functions some of which are the following;

Formatting

What is Formatting? Before storage device can be used by the computer they need to be formatted When a device is formatted, all data on it is removed and a disk filing system is created A disk filing system is used to create ‘addresses’ on the storage device to keep track of the stored files A commonly used file system in Windows is FAT (File Allocation Table).

Example of Formatting BEFORE Lets say that a new pen drive is going to be used Before it is formatted the device would be empty Once it is formatted a structure is created as shown in the example on the right AFTER Disk Sectors

After the device is formatted Once your device is formatted it is ready to be used Every time you save something on your device it will be saves on one of the disk sectors Storage Device File A Block 1 Block 2 Block 3

Formatting a Drive in Windows Connect the storage device Open My Computer Right click on the device Choose Format

The format dialog opens Here the user can change various settings, Press start Formatting will begin WARNING : remember that all data is lost!

Scandisk

Corrupt File System The file system on our computers could become corrupted This happens when our computer freezes Incorrect turning off of the computer power cuts System crashes This could result in incorrect folder structure or even corrupted files In order to fix this a scandisk is used

What is a Scandisk? As we said before the scandisk is used when out files system has for some reason be corrupted The scandisk is used to try and repair the errors being faced The scandisk also tries to restore the hard disk back to its original state

How to use Scandisk Double click on My Computer Right-click on the Drive Choose Properties Choose the tab Tools Click on Check Now (found under Error Checking)

… This opens up a small dialog window allowing the user to check for any problems You should tick the both boxes which will try to fix any problems. Then click on Start

Defragmentation

Why Files change We have many different files on our hard disk and these files change frequently; Copying Moving Installing Uninstalling Files can get split into several small parts to be saved across the hard disk. (Fragmented)

Fragmentation Fragmentation as we said before is the splitting up of files The different parts of the file are saved on different sectors of the hard disk Fragmentation makes loading time much longer as the computer must find all the different parts of the file

Example Assume that 2 files are fragmented on the hard disk The computer would have to look for all the blogs and defragment them to access the file

Defragmentation Defragmentation is the opposite of fragmentation Defragementation keeps all the parts of the file together so the computer would find them easily This is done by saving all the different parts close together on the hard disk

Example The file of before would no be saved differently thanks to defragmentation

How to Defragment your Files Open My Computer Right-click on the desired drive to be defragmented Choose Properties Choose Tools Choose Defragment Now…

… The application window will then appear Choose the drive to be defragmented click on Analyze (this will tell you if your drive needs defragmentation) Click Defragment In the above example you can see that defragmentation is required because there are a lot of fragmented files shown by the red lines

Antivirus

What is a Virus? A virus is a small program that is designed to do harm to the computer The most common effect of a virus is the deletion or corruption of files Viruses are usually downloaded from the Internet through e-mails, web-pages or shared between users Once a virus infects a computer it starts its working on harming your computer

What is an Antivirus? In order to make the virus stop infecting the computer we would need an antivirus An antivirus has a list of all known viruses If one of the listed viruses tries to enter the computer the antivirus will block it If the virus still enters the computer the antivirus can detect it and get rid of it

Why do we Update our Antivirus? Keeping our antivirus up to date is extremely important In today’s world viruses are created every minute so we would need to update our antivirus to list the new viruses created If we don’t update our antivirus it will not be aware about the new virus, hence our computers will not be protected

Examples Some of the different antivirus applications include the following; AVG - http://free.avg.com/ Avast - http://www.avast.com/ Avira - http://www.avira.com/ Microsoft Security Essentials - http://www.microsoft.com/security_esse ntials/

Compression Software

What is Compression Software Compression Software is used to decrease the size of files Also if you have a large number of files it will combine them into one single file. So if you have 22 files which you want to send by e-mail, instead of attaching them one-by-one, you could compress them and send them all as one file

How do we Compress Files? We can compress files by using Windows compression software Select all the files Right-click on any file Choose Send To… Choose Compressed Folder

Work Look up additional information about what we spoke about today Create a short write up of 2 to 4 pages Choose one of the following topics Format Scandisk Fragmentation/Defragmentation - Antivirus and viruses Compression Software