Consider the hard drive in your compuer like a small CD. When you install programs and write files to the hard drive it starts at the center and writes the files to the disk one after the other. Then you go through and delete some files, uninstall some programs, and suddenly there are holes in the disk. Now as you write new things to the disk it tries to fill the holes first, but this means your program won’t all be located in a nice continuous line. It will be fragmented. When you defragment the hard drive it takes the files that should be together and moves them back in a logical manner starting again at the center. Now read/writes happen to the disk much quicker and you should see a performance increase in your pc.
In order to start a Defrag in Windows XP go to “Start” and then “Programs” then “Accessories” then “System Tools” and then “Disk Defragmenter”. I like to click on the C drive and then click on analyze. Then just click on defragment and watch those files get more organized!
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[…] a good idea to regularly defragment your hard drive… What exactly does this mean? See the vocabulary lesson on Defragmentation. I recommend running a defrag about once every 2 months or so. More often if you have been […]
Hi! I loved the article on “Tools to Keep Your Computer Clean”, can you please explain how to start the defragmentation on Windows XP? Thank you very much!
Susan, I added instructions to the post for you. THANKS!