Brain Stem

There are generally two types of disk management program: those that copy and restore disk images for backup and security, and those which can re-partition disks so you can create and resize logical drives on them. Paragon's Hard Disk Manager handles both operations in a single package.

The 2009 Suite includes a small front-end menu which breaks down its functions into backup and restore, maintenance, rescue and recovery, wiping and 'advanced', the latter accessing the Hard Disk Manager itself. There's a lot of Wizard support within the program, so many of the regular functions, such as partition management, backup of disks and files and copying, are easy for anybody to use. If you want to work at a more detailed level, the Hard Disk Manager offers most of the extras you could want.

The main Hard Disk Manager runs under Windows, but this is really just to set up tasks. Once you've established what you want to do, most of the work is done without Windows running, as the software resets and uses a small Linux runtime to support itself. This is slightly old-fashioned, particularly when functions like file defragmentation are often run directly under Windows by rival applications.

Computers don't age particularly well. They slow down not only as their hardware becomes more out of date, but also as the operating system gets clogged up with all sorts of detritus (especially if it hasn't been maintained very well). Enter stage left Auslogics BoostSpeed, which aims to clean up all the mess and further improve operating system and Internet surfing speeds with a diverse range of tweaks.

Cleaning is where any operating system overhaul should begin, and BoostSpeed comes with a simple disk cleaner that flushes out browser cache and temp files. A startup manager, another typical inclusion in PC fitness programs, highlights all the programs loaded on boot-up and lets you disable any unnecessary application pre-loading.

Both these modules are on the basic side, although the registry cleaner is more fleshed out. By default, it only deals with safe areas of the registry so computing novices don't have any tricky decisions to make about whether to delete certain entries or not.

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Most people would probably agree that PC maintenance isn't as high a priority as it used to be. As such we'd expect the success of software like TuneUp Utilities to suffer from the fact that people either don't need to (or can't be bothered to) optimise a machine or are happy to make do with the tools supplied with Windows.

This is a shame, in a way, since TuneUp Utilities 2009 really is an impressive collection of utilities that'll help you clean, streamline and tweak various areas of the operating system to help improve performance and generally avoid the inevitable build up of clutter. The main problem here is that, as suggested, much of this can be done with the rather rudimentary tools supplied with Windows (if you know where to look) and the new version doesn't bring anything revolutionary to the table.

A revised interface and a bit of tweaking of the existing toolset is all you can expect for 2009, which isn't enough for an upgrade but the suite should still have distinct appeal to those who like to keep a clean PC.

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