PC Maintenance 3

Using Disk Defragmenter In the June and August newsletters, I explained how to use ScanDisk and Disk Cleanup. If you didn't get those issues, scroll to the bottom of this page for the links to the June and August columns. It's important that you run both ScanDisk and Disk Cleanup before you use Defrag. When you load a program or save a file onto your hard drive, your computer looks for the nearest open area and starts writing to it. If that space isn't big enough to hold the entire file, the disk drive will look for the next space and continue writing. If you have deleted a lot of files, there will be more spaces and these spaces won't all be side by side waiting for new data. Actually, it's not your hard drive that is fragmented, it's your files. The next time you want to load a file, your drive has to go looking for it all over the drive. This is why your hard drive slows down after a while. The Disk Defragmenter that comes with Microsoft Windows rearranges files and unused space, making your programs run faster. Here's how to do it: First, close all programs, including your Anti-Virus programs. To see what you have open, look on your task bar to the left of the clock. (figure 1) Right click on each one and select exit. Don't worry, the next time you turn on your computer, they'll reappear. I've seen the suggestion to disconnect the computer from your telephone line, but I never do. I'm not sure of the reasoning behind this, but thought I'd mention it incase you want to be extra safe.

The easiest way is to click on Start on your Taskbar, then onRun. Type C:\windows\defrag and hit enter. You'll see figure 2. If you have more than one hard drive, or your hard drive is partitioned, you'll want to select "All Hard Drives". Then click onSettings on the left toward the bottom. You should check both settings under "When defragmenting my hard drive" and also the box that says "Every time I defragment my hard drive." Click "OK" twice, and Defrag will start to run. (Figure 2). I always like to see what's going on, so I click on "Show details" Figure 3 Click on Legend in Figure 4 and you'll see what all those little squares mean. Figure 4 With today's huge hard drives, degragging can take quite a while, but it's worth it. I usually set it up and go do something else or go to bed.