Looking for some specific software.

[Comp01]

I just bought a new PC, and I am now looking for 3 thins: a good benchmarking program (A free one, possibly?), a good defragmentor (for drives >40GB) and a scandisk program, anyone know of any good ones?

[GlobalForce]

Hi Comp01,

That you bring this up, I do recall viewing you're requested items here before.....

From the "The Prince of Downloads" (ICE/iceni60 ;D )....EVEREST (http://www.lavalys.com/products/overview.php?pid=1&lang=en&pageid=1), system information utility (formerly the excellent AIDA32). Nice recommendation from this thread (http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=61093). ;)

Now I don't run this 'yet' (looks quite good BTW), but Gerardwil swears by it (don't you Gerard 8) ),
BUZZSAW & DIRMS (http://www.dirms.com/) for you're defragmentation needs....

Finally (and the key to running native ScanDisk and Defrag really is to close background applications),
jump over to BROADBAND Reports (http://www.broadbandreports.com/forum/remark,12500906~mode=flat) for some comments concerning you're last program.

ALL FREE !


Best,
GF

[Firecat]

-{ Quote: "I just bought a new PC, and I am now looking for 3 thins: a good benchmarking program (A free one, possibly?), a good defragmentor (for drives >40GB) and a scandisk program, anyone know of any good ones?" }-
For defragmentor and ScanDisk do what GlobalForce says. For system benchmarking there are many apps:

SiSoft SANDRA (never used it myself as I am on dialup and cannot download)
FutureMark PCMark
FutureMark 3DMark (graphics card benchmarking)
ScienceMark 2.0

These apps should be good enough for the job.

Regards,
Firecat

[iceni60]

i don't really do any benchmarking, but as well as Everest, PC Wizard (http://www.cpuid.com/pcw.php) can benchmark too. and, i think they are well worth having. between them they can tell you everything you need to know about your PC.

here's the link to futuremark
http://futuremark.com/download/

and here's something that's still a beta. there is a note that says it may have bugs, so it's up to you :-\
http://www.7byte.com/?page=metabench#screenshots

here's something else by the people that make PCWizard. it's called CPU-Z and it gives you info about your PC. not benchmarking, but it can help if you need to find out what you have
http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php

there's also somethig called Super-PI which tests how fast you can compute pi. you could do a search for that.
i use BUZZSAW & DIRMS too. defrag with DIRMS, then put BUZZSAW in startups.