Defrag your cluttered hard drive
I want to talk briefly about defragmenting your hard drive. Your computer is unorganized by nature, throwing files and data wherever it wants to on the drive. Your operating system makes a visual display of your data which looks organized as you make new folders and move things from your desktop to other folders and so on. But underneath, your hard drive is scattering all the data wherever it can find the space and when this builds up, your hard drive can slow down and run less efficiently.
Your hard drive doesn’t take the time to sort things out when it stores them, so you’ve got to take control and make it sort things out. Microsoft Windows comes with a tool that will do this for you. Go to start, all programs, accessories, system tools, and you’ll see disk defragmenter. Select this and hit defragment and you’re set. You will have to leave your computer alone for a little while as this can take some time depending on how big your hard drive is.
And that’s it, your computer will gain a small percentage of speed back but when this is done regularly, you will notice that your computer will run a little faster and things will be a little smoother over time.
August 27th, 2007 at 4:14 am
I would compare it with a jigsaw puzzle that has the pieces scattered all across and has to be completed in record time. The computer can only perform as fast as the HDD can be. If it has to spend extra effort trying to seek file fragments, all operations are bound to slowdown over time. Give the HDD regular health checkups, cleanups and make sure it doesnt catch the fragmentation malady.
August 27th, 2007 at 9:16 am
You will have to leave your computer alone for a little while as this can take some time depending on how big your hard drive is.
This is the biggest problem with the windows defragger – it’s slow and does not do multiple drives simultaneously. I am using Diskeeper, a standalone defragmentation utility that is much faster and defrags more than one drive at a time. It also features a great automatic mode (I have left it ‘on’ for my system) which once enabled will automatically handle defragmentation jobs on the PC without bothering you. So far, I like what Diskeeper does; haven’t had any problems with it at all.
August 27th, 2007 at 5:53 pm
@level, that’s a good way to describe it, and I agree, performing a disk check every so often prevents other problems from arising.
@Wallander, Thanks for the input, I agree with you wholeheartedly about windows defragger. I use Perfectdisk but i have heard good things about diskkeeper.