Speed up your computer by optimising your Hard Drive...

You can speed up the performance of your computer by optimising your hard drive using Disk Defragmenter. When you add and remove programs or files from your computer, the data on your hard drive tends to get scattered all over the place (on the hard drive that is). This is known as fragmentation or some people might say, "your hard drive is fragmented." Your computer takes longer to run programs when the data is fragmented because it has to search all over the hard drive for the data. The Disk Defragmenter rearranges the data so that your computer system can run more efficiently...


How to Run Disk Defragmenter

Step 1: Click the Start Button
Step 2: Select Programs, then Accessories, then System Tools




Step 3: Click Disk Defragmenter from the menu (see image above)


A dialog box appears asking which drive you want to defragment



Step 4: Choose the drive you would like to defragment

Note: If you have more than one drive, there is an option to defrag all the hard drives


Step 5: Click the settings tab



Step 6: Make sure the option "Rearrange program files so my programs start faster" is checked.
Step 7: Click OK to return to the "Select Drive" screen.


Step 8: Click OK to start the defragmenter.




If you are using Windows 95, you may be presented with a message saying only a small percentage of your drive is fragmented. It will ask if you still want to run the program. Although the fragmentation may be low, sometimes you still get better performance after running Defragmenter.


Note: Disk Defragmenter is a very slow process. Close all programs before running defrag. You shouldn't use your computer while it's running, since each time you write new data to the disk, the Defragmenter will stop and start over from scratch. It also makes your computer run very slowly (until the process is over of course). Some people prefer to run the Defragmenter before going to bed and let the computer do its stuff while they are sleeping