Utilities for Win2k (1 Viewer)

[John*K]

Hi -

I am getting closer to finisihing my upgrades, but wanted to ask for some opinions about system utilities for windows. I was playing around with my folk's SystemSuite 3.0 and it seems quite nice with quite a few features, but does anyone have any experience with any other system utilities that might be better? are there others that I should consider that would be better, such as Norton?

Thanks.

 

[Rob Gillespie]

John, I think packages such as Norton Systemworks are quite overrated. Windows 2000 and XP run perfectly well without them and don't need tidying up as much as older Windows.

Is there anything specific that you need?

 

[John*K]

Hi Rob - My main concern is hard disk drive health. I had a drive die on me recently, and would like to have something that would help warn me before something happens. SystemSuite 3 had a SMART drive feature that could tell you that, which is exactly what I thought would be good for me. I have been very worried about my hard drives ever since that last lost hard drive. Thank you Rob.

 

[Rob Gillespie]

Right, well I think most drive manufacturers provide at least some kind of drive 'health' diagnostic software. I know Segate and IBM do because I've used them. They're typically tiny DOS-based utilities which you'd have to run on a regular basis but I imagine there must be a Windows-based equivalent available from somewhere.

If you think a package like SW will do the job then go for it. I just get a bit itchy when I see people using it for no real reason other than because Symantec say they should.

Remember that software will not stop a hard drive from failing - it can only alert you. If a failure is worrying you then perhaps you need to consider a proper backup strategy for your data (if you don't already have one, that is).