hard drive

Computer Maintenance – Defragmenting your Hard Drive

Q My computer starts to respond slowly and takes forever to start. What must you do to make it faster?

A Your hard drive looks like a messy office, with files everywhere. Over time the same file can have bits stored everywhere on the hard drive. This leads to inefficiency as the computer needs to look everywhere for the file. To speed up the operation we need to save the files in the same place. Computer geeks call this operation “defragmenting”. Your computer’s hard drive needs to be reorganised.

Luckily for us Microsoft© has included a limited defragmenting tool with windows©. To use this tool you need to open “my computer”. Right click on the drive you wish to defragment and choose “properties”. A dialogue box will open showing you how much disk space you have used and how much free space is available on your hard disk. Choose the “tools” tab at the top of the dialogue box. Then click on the button labelled “Defragment now…” A new programme will open. Choose the hard drive you wish to defragment and click on “Defragment”. Your computer will start defragmenting your hard drive. Find something else to do, as when you defragment your drive you shouldn’t be doing anything else on your computer. The operation should take about 30 minutes to 1 hour. After the hard drive has finished defragmenting click on “Finish”.

Your computer will appear to run a little quicker. You should defragment your hard drive at least once per month.

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