Disk Management Tools

Preserving information on hard drives has never been more important than today. Not only
do you want to keep your own information, you have the legal obligation to manage company
records if you work for a publicly held firm. Here are some disk management utilities to be
familiar with.
FORMAT.EXE
If you want to wipe out all information on a disk or prepare a disk for an operating system,
you can use the FORMAT command. FORMAT.EXE is a DOS program that allows you to wipe
partitions clean. Before installing a new operating system, always format the hard drive.
CHKDSK
You can use the Windows CHKDSK utility to create and display status reports for the hard disk.
CHKDSK can also correct file system problems (such as cross-linked files) and scan for and
attempt to repair disk errors. You can manually start CHKDSK by right-clicking the problem
disk and selecting Properties. This will bring up the Properties dialog box for that disk, which
shows the current status of the selected disk drive.
By clicking the Tools tab at the top of the dialog box, and then clicking the Check Now
button in the Error-checking section, you can start CHKDSK. Exercise 6.3 walks you through
starting CHKDSK in Windows XP.

Running CHKDSK in Windows XP
In this exercise, you will check your hard disk for errors.
1. Open Windows Explorer by holding down the Windows key and pressing E.
2. Right-click C: and choose Properties.
3. Click the Tools tab and then click the Check Now button.
4. Choose your options: You can automatically fix filesystem errors and/or scan for and
attempt recovery of bad sectors.
5. After you have selected your options, click Start.

DEFRAG.EXE
Defragmenting a disk involves analyzing the disk and then consolidating fragmented files and
folders so they occupy a contiguous space, thus increasing performance during file retrieval.
The command-line DEFRAG utility allows you to run a defrag from a command prompt. You
can also run a defrag in Windows through the Disk Defragmenter in the Computer Management
utility or by right-clicking on a hard drive in Windows Explorer, choosing Properties,
then the Tools tab, and clicking the Defragment Now button.
NTBACKUP.EXE
If you want to back up your system, you can run the NTBACKUP.EXE utility located in the
\WINDOWS\system32 directory. You can also run it by clicking Start  All Programs  Accessories
 System Tools  Backup.