P3: Software Utilities
1. Security
Security
software is important as they provide security to your pc and all the data in
it. Firewall is software that is already installed on the computer designed to restrict
access to the user’s computer network, to maintain security of the computer system.
It does this by stopping data from accessing the computer through the network, some
data can access the computer, only if the user allows the data to access.
Software such as viruses does not get access to the computer at all. Firewall
helps the security of the system against outside threats.
Anti-Virus
protects a computer system from viruses and spyware. Anti-Virus software
constantly runs and scans the computer and hard drive to protect it from viruses
and spyware. The anti-virus software is always up to date with the old and new
virus and spyware there may be.
The
software also protects the user from any website that might be infected and
also can get rid of any. Anti-Virus software can improve the speed of a
computer system by making sure the computer is kept free of virus and damaging
software, having a computer without anti-virus software can cause a lot of
problems for the user, as the computer could slow down or even loss of data. An
example of antivirus software is AVG and it is free to download.
2. Disk Clean-Up
Disk
Clean-up removes unused files to free up disk space on the user’s hard drive.
The disk clean-up allows the users to select files that they no longer need.
Removing unused files on a computer can improve the computers speed, as there will
no longer be any files saved that are wasting the hard drive space. This
improves the computer system speed, as there are no longer files that are
unused, wasting the space in the hard drive. An example for clean-up is
CCleaner.
The defragmentation utility is very good it has many functions like a
scheduler which allows you to set the utility to automatically run at a certain
time and day. It also had the ability to analyse the disk. The analyse function
to decides how fragmented the disk is, if the disk is fragmented you just click
the defragment disk button and the software will do everything. It can take a
long time depending on how fragmented your system is. This improves the
computer speed as all the files will be compressed into order. For example the
computer will be quicker to find the files, as they will all be in order making
it easy for the computer to find.
3. Drive formatting
So that the
storage media stored on the computer can be recognised by your computer system
so it could be used to store data files. The disk on the drive tells the PC if
each sector on the drive is being used, formatting it will change the table of
content, so that each entry is available. The data is still stored on the drive
however the computer ignores it, allowing you to rewrite another data on it. An
example can be GParted, which allows you to create, delete, resize, move,
label, copy and paste partitions and also the system files on them without
losing data. This is very helpful as it can create more space for your C:
drive, and also creates free space for a new operating system.
D1: How these Software Utilities can Improve Computer Performance
Security software such as firewall
which is installed on your computers system already improves the performance of
your computer system by not allowing others within the network gaining access
to your computer. Anti-Virus software improves the computer performance blocking
virus such as malware which can access your computer and damage the performance
of the computer system. Anti-Virus software also have regular scans where the
software scans the computer system to find any virus that are on them computer
which it then removes them from the computer system, improving the performance.
Some Anti-Virus software also automatically deletes browser history and cookies
which are data that are stored on to the computer system, every time you visit
a website.
Disk
Clean-Up software improve the computer performance by removing unused and
damaged files off your hard drive. This improves the performance of the
computer as there will not be any unused files wasting the hard drive space.
The CCleaner software works similar to Anti-Virus software, where it scans the
computer looking for unused and damaged files, where it then deletes them off the
hard drive.
Driver formatting tool improves the performance by
removing all data that is installed on the hard drive. This improves the
computer performance as the hard drive will have free space. However the data
is still on the hard drive but the computer ignores them and rewrites other
data on top of it. GParted is software which creates free space on the computer
so that it improves the performance if the system.
"note you may be asked to expand on some of the points, so try to add more to the assignment. Also remember not to copy word for word, as their are now software to check for plagiarism, when marking the assignment, try to complete the assignment your own way." [I am not encouraging you to copy this piece is here for educational purposes]
"note you may be asked to expand on some of the points, so try to add more to the assignment. Also remember not to copy word for word, as their are now software to check for plagiarism, when marking the assignment, try to complete the assignment your own way." [I am not encouraging you to copy this piece is here for educational purposes]
