OCEAN SPRINGS, Miss., April 17, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- SlimWare Utilities today announced the newest version of its popular PC cleaning and optimization software. Available for free at www.slimwareutilities.com, SlimCleaner 3.0 includes a new suite of Disk Tools to manage the amount of space taken up by files and secure the contents of various drives.  The new Disk Tools in SlimCleaner 3.0 are designed to keep all drives – including internal hard drives, external drives, flash drives and any others -- clear of clutter and secure.

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The Disk Tools tab is accessible from SlimCleaner's home screen, and includes a Disk Summary, Disk Analyzer, Disk Wiper and Shredder.

Squarely benefiting Ultrabook users, Disk Analyzer provides a visual display of a PC's hard drive so that consumers can analyze the contents and easily identify what's taking up disk space. Disk Analyzer reads the contents of a drive to flag large files that are taking up an extraordinary amount of space, giving consumers the option to remove them. Users have the ability to view files by directory or file type. This feature is especially useful for consumers who use Ultrabooks and solid state drives, which offer less storage space and make it more important to have a clean, efficient drive. 

Disk Summary shows the amount of space available on each of a PC's disks. Users can select a disk and click "analyze" to see how much space is used by each file.

Also new, Drive Wiper is a clean-up tool that overwrites the raw sectors of a drive with random data to securely erase data that users would like to dispose of.  In "free space" mode, Drive Wiper overwrites sectors that house unwanted data, left over from deleted files, with random data. This process secures the drive by making previously deleted files unreadable, without harming any files that actually exist. In "entire drive" mode, secondary partitions (NOT the C:\ drive) can be completely wiped of both currently-existing files and previously-deleted files.

A shredder, with up to 35 overwrite passes, is also part of the Disk Tools section in SlimCleaner 3.0.

SlimCleaner's new Disk Tools tab meets the needs of consumers who use Ultrabooks and solid state drives, which offer less internal storage space and make it more important to have a clean, efficient drive.

"The trend toward Ultrabooks and devices with smaller amounts of storage means that consumers will need tools to keep their disk drives clear of clutter and free of unnecessary or extra-large files," said Chris Cope, founder and CEO of SlimWare Utilities. "SlimCleaner 3.0 does that."

SlimCleaner 3.0 is newest version of SlimWare Utilities' award-winning, community-based software for making personal computers faster, cleaner and more fully optimized. Crowd-sourced and cloud-based, SlimCleaner 3.0 combines a powerful PC cleaning engine with a community of users who provide real-time feedback about the apps and items on a PC, to help others improve their own computer's performance. 

SlimCleaner uses "authoritative ranking" to ensure that users' ratings are accurate and that they reflect what the community as a whole really thinks. SlimCleaner weighs the ratings of each contributor against that person's previous levels of accuracy, as well as against the ratings of other high-ranking users.  In this way, consumers see the descriptions and community ratings for the items on their PC, and they can adjust settings to optimize their machine accordingly.

"SlimCleaner 3.0 includes all the features necessary to make a PC system run smoothly, from cleaning and optimization, to alternate software suggestions, to clean-up and speed-up tools for your hard drive," said Chris Cope, CEO and founder of SlimWare Utilities.  "All of our features are integrated with our SlimWare Utilities network of users, which provides community-based feedback to tell people what's on their machine, and what to do about it. It's like having an army of tech-savvy geeks helping you maintain your computer," Cope said.

Other products in the SlimWare Utilities suite of free software include SlimComputer, for removing bloatware from a PC, and SlimDrivers, a free and automatic way to update PC drivers. For more information about SlimCleaner, please visit www.slimwareutilities.com.

About SlimWare Utilities

SlimWare Utilities automates the solutions to the world's computer problems. Headquartered near Biloxi, Mississippi, SlimWare Utilities' cloud-based, crowd-sourced software provides consumers with personalized applications developed from the community input of IT users everywhere. For more information, please visit www.slimwareutilities.com.

SOURCE SlimWare Utilities