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COMPUTER BITS
BY JASON COLE
Norton Utilities for Win95; Pt.2
Norton Utilities for Windows 95 Ver.2 has
many useful programs and this time we shall
talk about the Speed Disk utility. This
utility is used to “defragment” the files on
your hard disc drive. Running Speed Disk
regularly ensures optimum drive
performance and greatly decreases the
chances of file corruption.
What is file “fragmentation”? Fragmentation occurs when files are split
into smaller segments (or fragments)
and written to scattered locations on
the hard disc drive. This means that
the drive has to work harder in order
to open and save the affected files.
Fragmentation occurs as files are
written to and subsequently deleted
from the drive. The reason for this
is that when you delete a file, you
create a “hole” in the main block of
Fig.1: this is the window that appears when you first load Speed Disk. The
program scans your hard disc drive first to see if there are any errors.
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data where the files resided. This
means that any subsequent files that
are saved can be written to the free
space left by this hole. Now if the
file is larger than the hole, then what
ever is left over is written in the next
available hole.
Adding to this, temporary swap
files such as used in Windows 95 are
continually changing size and being
written and deleted. This is why there
is always some fragmentation on the
drive. A small amount of fragmentation doesn’t cause any problems but
if left unchecked, the speed and reliability of the drive will be reduced.
Speed Disk
Speed Disk is a powerful hard
disc reorganisation tool. It works in
a similar way to Symantec’s Defrag,
which is already installed on most
computers with DOS. The main difference here is that Speed Disk is a
lot more powerful.
Before running Speed Disk, it’s important to note that you should always
use Norton’s Disk Doctor to correct
any errors on the drive. If you don’t
check for errors before running Speed
Disk, you run the risk of losing files.
When you load Speed Disk, the program scans the hard drive first – see
Fig 1. This is just a quick check and
is similar to Disk Doctor. If problems
are detected, Speed Disk will inform
you to run Disk Doctor to correct any
errors. However, this does not happen
often if you have already run Disk
Doctor beforehand.
After the hard drive has been
scanned, a new dialog box appears
(Fig.2). This box tells you the percentage of fragmentation. In this case,
8% of the drive is fragmented. We can
now start defragging the drive or quit.
Fig.2 (above): this
dialog box shows
the amount of file
fragmentation and
indicates which
of three options is
recommended.
Fig.3 (left): the
Legend dialog box
lets you change the
colours on the disc
map.
If we choose to go ahead, then there
are three options:
(1). Full Optimisation: this reorganises the entire drive so that all files
are at the beginning of the drive and
in one piece.
(2). Unfragment Files Only: this
collects any fragmented files and
rewrites them so that they are not
fragmented.
(3). Unfragment Free Space: this
is similar to Unfragment Files Only,
except that it works with the free
space. This will leave fragmented
files fragmented but will supply you
with a section of the drive, generally
at the end, which is clear of any files.
Finally, there is a check box at the
bottom labelled Optimize Swap File”.
If you check this box, Speed Disk will
move the Windows swap file to the
end of the data. This minimises future
file fragmentation and also speeds up
the swap file by eliminating the need
to search for it all over the drive.
If you now click Start, Speed Disk
will start to organise the drive. This
can take quite some time on older
drives, large drives and extremely
fragmented drives. However, if you
choose Cancel, then you are taken
back to the main screen (Fig.1). After
a few moments, the display shows
you some more detail about the drive,
such as Swap File location, unmovable file locations and so on.
Clicking the Properties button and
then clicking Legend from the resulting menu brings up the box shown in
Fig.3. This box lets you change the
colours on the disc map but most people will stick to the default settings.
You can view a fragmentation
report of your data in the Properties
menu (Fig.4) or you can click Properties, Options to bring up the dialog
box shown in Fig.5. This is where the
fun begins because you have three
tabs to click and lots of options to
choose from. These tabs are Optimisation, Appearance and Advanced.
We’ll look at each option in turn.
(1) Optimisation: this area gives
you the same original options as
shown in Fig.2, as well as two extra
options. These extra options are Verify
Writes and Wipe Free Space.
Verify Writes takes longer because
it checks the data after writing it to
see if it has been written correctly.
Wipe Free Space does just that – it
wipes the free space after the data has
been written. This makes it almost impossible to find any files that may have
been deleted from the remaining area.
Next to the Full Optimisation
section is an extra button called
Customize. This section lets you
place particular files and folders in
certain sequences. You can set up the
program to place folders or even files
first. You can place particular folders
which are rarely used or written to at
the beginning of the drive and folders
that are continually being written to
at the end, for example.
Once you have chosen a particular
setup and started the process, you can
get yourself a nice cup of coffee as it
will take a while the first time. This
is because most files will have to be
moved whether they are fragmented
or not.
(2) Appearance: clicking the Appearance tab brings up the dialog
box shown in Fig.7. This gives you a
couple of options for the Disk Map.
Here, you can have the data appear as
Blocks or Bars. Click between them to
see which one you like. You also have
the option of playing music while the
disc is defragging – just tick the Play
Music box and select a WAV or MIDI
file from the drop-down list.
Me? – I generally leave the room
while the disc is defragging and come
back later.
(3) Advanced: this area allows
you to set up Background Operation
(Fig.8). In this case, defragging will
start after one minute of idle time
Fig.4: the Fragmentation Report dialog box shows the
amount of fragmentation for each file on the hard drive.
Fig.5 (right): this dialog box lets you choose the optimisation
method (in this case, Full Optimisation) and whether or not
to optimise the swap file. There are also a couple of security
options; ie, Verify Writes and Wipe Free Space.
February 1998 89
Fig.6: clicking the Cutomize button in Fig.5 brings up
this dialog box which lets you place particular files and
folders in certain sequences.
Fig.7: clicking the Appearance tab brings up this dialog box.
Here, you can choose to have the data appear as blocks or as
bars. You can also play music while the disc is defragging.
Fig.8 (left): the Advanced tab allows you to set up Defrag to
run in the background. In this case, defragging will start after
one minute of idle time. Fig.9 (above) shows the on-screen
display if you choose to hide the disc map, or you can
minimise this so that it appears as an icon in the tray on the
task bar (near the clock
and you can choose to watch the communications ports (this will prevent
defrag from starting in the middle
of a download or if you’re using the
mouse). Again it’s good to have but I
rarely use it.
If you choose to not use the map
you can hide it to just get the box
shown in Fig.9. This box can then be
minimised so that it is just a small
icon near your clock on the task bar.
In fact, you would hardly know it was
running since you can carry on with
other work.
This feature is great for administrators of large networks, where you
don’t want to “scare” the machine’s
regular user by bringing up a large
SC
Speed Disk box.
90 Silicon Chip
Tip Of The Month
If you have “Call Waiting” turned on for your telephone it’s a good idea
to turn it off before logging on to the Internet. That’s because the tone
that “Call Waiting” sends to let you know that another caller is trying to get
through can be misinterpreted by your modem. In some cases, the modem
can even hang up which is quite inconvenient if you’re in the middle of
downloading a large file. Alternatively, the signal could corrupt the data
that’s being downloaded.
To turn “Call Waiting” off, simply dial #43# and wait for the facility tone (or
a recorded announcement) before hanging up. You can turn “Call Waiting”
on again after your on-line session by dialling *43#. If you have a recent
Telstra Touchphone 400, you can turn “Call Waiting” off by pressing the
‘Cancel’ and ‘Call Wait’ buttons; or on again by pressing the ‘Store’ and
‘Call Wait’ buttons.
Finally, to speed up your web browsing, turn the graphics and sound
options off in Internet Explorer and Netscape.
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