Both Windows XP and Vista both offer basic disk management software. The Microsoft Management Console includes a Disk Management snap-in. It allows you to create and delete partitions, assign drive letters, format disks, and create specialty volumes such as mirrored or striped. While this provides great basic functionality, an office can require a program that is more geared towards larger businesses.

Disk management software comes in a couple of different flavors. Some programs are solely disk and partition management utilities, and others are primarily for disk defragmentation and file recovery. Each has its own part in making your office run as smoothly as possible:

1. Purchase a disk management software with disk defragmentation to keep your office computers running at peak performance.
2. Use partition and disk management software to manipulate the hard drives and partitions in your servers and office workstations without fear of data loss.
3. Check into specialty disk management software that can meet the needs of your business.
   

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Increase office productivity with defragmenting disk management software

Keeping your company's hard drives defragmented will increase the productivity your workplace and keep business systems always running at their maximum peak performance. There are a number of software solutions designed for this purpose.

I recommend: Diskeeper has a number of versions of their latest software, designed from the ground up to provide real time file system performance for your servers. Achieve maximum server speed, reliability, and performance. The Paragon Software Group offers Hard Disk Manager for Servers, which is an advanced hard drive toolset that manages your servers' hard drive through every stage of its life cycle.

Implement server-based disk management software to easily manipulate your hard drives and partitions

Having as little down time as possible is everyone's goal. An enterprise disk management software can help by allowing you to make the necessary changes to the structure of your data without losing any of your precious information.

I recommend: Acronis offers Disk Director Server 10.0, which is a great management tool for minimizing server downtime and getting maximum performance out of your servers. Norton PartitionMagic also allows you to easily organize your hard drives.

Decide whether specialized disk management software can help your business

One very specialized subcategory of disk management software is data recovery. Every office fears losing vital operational data. Data recovery software may just save you time and money. There is also disk management software for your Pocket PC devices.

I recommend: Disk Doctor has data recovery software for NTFS and FAT file systems, and also has a couple specialty products for Office Outlook and Outlook Express email files. SoftWinter is the provider of StorageTools for Windows Mobile. This award-winning program provides all the data management functionality you could desire for your Pocket PC or Smartphone. Choosing the right disk management software for your business can be a difficult task. Visit CNET Networks to get opinions on all the most current software packages.

Tips & Tactics

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• •  New in Windows Vista is the ability to repartition your main hard drive partition on the fly. Windows Vista's Disk Management software allows you to repartition your existing hard disk any way you want. You can now shrink, extend, create, and format partitions without jeopardizing your data. It's always best to make a precautionary back up prior to making any changes!