Smart HDD Stretcher

With the flourishing online services that provide Cloud storage, one might think that local space is no longer a concern. However, applications and especially video games take a lot of space, and you can end up with a clogged PC before you know it. In this regard, Smart HDD Stretcher wants to organize files on your disk drive just so you never run out of free space.

The setup process takes only a little while and you quickly have the chance to take a look at the set of features. In terms of visual design, the application comes with a slightly customized interface, several visual and sound animations for hovering the mouse over buttons, as well as neat descriptions so you don’t get stuck along the way.

The main window puts all the application’s features at your disposal. Both fixed and removable drives can be put under the scope, but only if they are found under the NTFS file system, which might require conversion in some cases. Sadly, there’s no built-in function to perform a quick format in order to change the file system type, so you need to rely on other methods.

An information panel displays space-related details for the currently selected drive, such as total, free space, compressed files and all files count, and how much space files take on your space. The left panel displays a tree view of all detected drives, with the possibility to expand drives and select only the areas of interest, thus protecting system files.

All other options are represented with check boxes to choose whether to exclude Windows System Folders, use Smart File Selector, test before compressing, defragment files, and more. There’s even a choice to preserve system files in case you accidentally select them for processing.

Controls don’t count as much, and unless manually paused, the process goes on and scans connected drives, and attempts to process them. Hitting the Stretch My Disks button initiates the compression process in order to save some space, and it can result in a surprisingly high amount of saved space.

All things considered, Smart HDD Stretcher is a practical utility to keep around, especially when working with large amounts of files and your local disk isn’t quite rich in megabytes. Accommodation is a walk in the park thanks to the simplistic design, while effort required on your behalf is reduced to a minimum because of automated processing.