Drive Magic 5

View larger image

• Quick specs
• Price: Free to try (30-day trial,some features disabled); $29.95 to buy
• Operating system: Windows 98/Me/2000/XP/Vista/NT
• Date added: November 23, 2007
• Total Downloads: 64,235
• Downloads last week: 43
• See full specifications

Add to my list Add to my Watch List

Download Now (423K)

Tested spyware free

CNET editors' review

Reviewed by: CNET Staff

This program promises to be your very own disk drive maid service: It'll clean up all the loose bits and broken bytes left in the free, unwritten areas of your drives and make them shine. Well, perhaps not shine, but Drive Magic 5 does promise to clean any file residue left behind by Windows' notorious deletion process.

The interface is easy to follow, although the X icon for Sanitize can be a bit confusing, since it's the same as the Delete icon in Windows Explorer. Drive Magic does not delete anything from your hard drive. However, the cleaning process is slow, even on the fastest and least-intrusive setting. It took nearly an hour to scrub an 80 GB drive. The trial version is limited. It will only clean a drive labeled A, B, or C, so you can't easily clean external devices. The full version has five settings: basic, simple, secure, ultimate, and custom. There are also basic logging options and password protection.

Overall, the program interface is decent enough. Whether Drive Magic does as it promises or is just a glorified disk defragmenter is hard to discern.

Publisher's description

Sanitize, protect, and secure any magnetic drive or USB drive. The process of sanitizing a drive means overwriting each unused track several times to erase the data that was there. This applies to the free drive space only. Drive Magic will never harm your existing files like so many others. Drive Magic also now contains four patent pending sanitation methods which will clean, protect, and extend the life of any magnetic drive. Our state of the art sanitation process will also cap off remaining sectors and recondition the unused free drive space--this helps extend the life of the device. Sanitizing a drive using Drive Magic ensures that deleted files can never be recovered.

This version is the first release on CNET Download.com.

Real Player SP

Watch your favorite videos on your favorite devices.

Download Now

More popular Diagnostic Software downloads

1. 359,687 downloads 1. Advanced SystemCare Free
2. 62,823 downloads 2. CCleaner
3. 52,540 downloads 3. Advanced Registry Optimizer
4. 28,812 downloads 4. Wise Registry Cleaner
5. 20,487 downloads 5. Advanced SystemCare Pro
6. See all Diagnostic Software downloads