Maintenance

When your hard drive becomes fragmented, the computer slows down. It's as simple as that. When you write data to the disk, windows saves it in free areas of the hard drive. This means that when you save a picture or a movie, it can actually be split into several sections and stored at different locations on your hard drive. As you delete files, new spaces become open that are available for writing. These spaces quickly fill up with new pieces of data. When you go to a webpage, the temporary files such as pictures, html code, scripts, and other goodies are thrown on your disk. The problem here is that over time, your disk takes longer and longer to assemble a complete part of a file. Pulling up a picture one day may take a second or two, and the next day it could take three or four. This is because windows has to sort through all the files that are on the drive, causing the head on the hard disk to go back and forth in a search to assemble it into one complete picture.

When you defragment the drive, it lines all the separate sections up so that when you open a file, the disk can go from one section to the next without searching back and forth. This significantly improves file access times, as well as the time needed to boot up or shut down. Have everything organized and in order is also a lot better on your hard drive's lifespan. The less that the head on the disk moves the better.

In Windows XP:
Click Start, goto All Programs, goto Accessories, goto System Tools, and click Disk Defragmenter.

This screen will come up. At this point, select the disk you want to defragment and click on Defragment.

In Windows Vista:
Click the Windows button at bottom left (Start), in the search box type "defrag", then hit the enter button.

This screen will come up. At this point, click on Defragment Now.

It's sometimes beneficial to do this a couple of times, and it would be in your best intrest to do it often. If you have any questions feel free to stop into my store at 1001 Larrabee Ave. Suite 101.

Thanks for reading!

Justin Vail
Dog On Fire