Defragmenting Your Hard Drive
Imagine your hard drive is like a book, with many pages of text.
When you delete files from your hard drive, it is like erasing
scattered words or paragraphs
throughout the book. These deleted files may be spread around on
different pages and in different chapters. On your computer,
these are different locations on your hard drive.
When you add (save) new files to your hard drive, the computer attempts to
fill those scattered erasures with the new files. If the new file
doesn’t fit into the “hole,” the computer breaks up (or fragments)
the file up and puts the rest of it into the next available space. Because files
are constantly added and removed from a hard drive, over time the
files become fragmented.
Imagine how much longer it would take you to read the book if a
paragraph were fragmented with a few words on one page, a few more
words on another page, and the rest of the words on yet another
page. It would be easier for you if the sentences were rearranged in
order. It's easier (and faster) for your computer if the fragmented
files are rearranged in order too.
The computer
automatically keeps track of where the
files are and how they are divided. But imagine how complex
the situation becomes
when hundreds and hundreds of files are fragmented and scattered
over a large hard disk.
The reason you want to defragment is because the hard drive works
longer and harder to read files that are scattered in different
locations.
A Disk Defragmenter comes with Windows.
- Go to the Start Menu and choose Programs
- Go to Accessories and choose System Tools
- Then choose Disk Defragmenter.
- In the next dialogue box that appears, choose the drive you
wish to defragment (usually C:)
- It takes a while. It depends on the size of the disk and the
amount of fragmentation. It checks the hard disk for errors and
then defragments.
Defragment every two months or so. If you frequently add and
delete files, you should do it more often. Sometimes programs
running in the background, such as anti-virus programs, even
screensavers, can interfere with the defragmenter completing its
job. If this is the case, you need to make sure all programs
running in the background are shut down before starting the
defragmenter.
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