Utility Software.

1. Utility Software. Created by Tingley.

2. Utility Software • This term refers to software used on the system-level to manage data or perform some kind of check on the data. • Includes • Data compressors • Virus checkers • File managers • Defragmentation managers

3. Utility Software Functions • File Managers: • Copy • Delete • Rename • Create Folders • Format (wipe clean) a disk or data space • Find (search) • Backup, with possible archiving • Restore (retrieve files from backup)

4. Defragmentation • A disk is divided into free and used sectors • The physical locations of stored related data eventually becomes fragmented – i.e., related files are not stored together • A degragmenter can identify related files and move them closer to each other

5. “The diagram below will help explain the process” (Meyenn et. al. 207). • Now B is framentated. It was 3 units long, and the computer allocated it to the sequentially available space. A defragmenter could fix this: • …or something.

6. Data Compressors and Virus Scanners • These forms of Utility Software are self-explanitory. • Data Compression is used to: • Save space on backing storage • Save time when transmitting data (e.g. over the internet) • Virus Scanners check files and active processes over a set of known malicious software, and kill them viciously or otherwise.

7. Data Compressors • An example of data compression is using single characters – called tokens – in Strings to reduce the number of characters. • For example, Consider the String: • “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog while the theme is theoretical.” • If ‡ is used as a token to represent the common word ‘the’, then the String becomes: • “The quick brown fox jumps over ‡ lazy dog while ‡ ‡me is ‡oretical.” • Note that while ‘the’ becomes ‡, ‘The’ remains unchanged

8. Virus Checkers • Reports malicious files or viruses • Attempts to remove found viruses • Attempts to scan incoming files for viruses