All Fragged Up

Is your computer running slower than it should be? If you are constantly downloading and deleting things, you will most likely notice a significant decrease in speed. The reason for this is because of how Windows deals with file management. Say you have 3 files, x,y,z, and you delete one of them and then download a new file. That new file will take the space of the deleted file, so your files would be arrange on the disk as x,a,z. This makes it harder for the disk to read the files since they are out of order. This is known as fragmentation, easy way to remember that is because you have fragments of information every where. What needs to be done is a defragmentation. This can take a LONG time, so I suggest you give yourself a WEEKEND to do it just in case. Defragmenting takes all that messy, out of order, discombobulated information, and tidies it up. This in turn allows your hard drive to find the information faster, and makes everything run much smoother. To defrag your computer, first click on the start menu-->right click on "Computer"-->Right click on the disk you want to check-->Properties--> Tools. This will bring up a window with three options, the middle one being defrag. Click on it and it will open another window. This will show you all the disks that can be cleaned up, which most likely will be only one unless you have multiple hard drives with Windows installed. First, you will need to select the disk you want to defrag, then click "Analyze". This will scan your disk and see what percentage of it is fragmented. Once that is done, make sure you have everything closed on your computer, don't have other programs open. Don't download anything or install anything either. Once you are ready, click defragment. Your computer will then start cleaning up the disk. Leave your computer on and let it do its thing. Check in on it every hour or so to wake it from sleep and make sure everything is running fine. When I did this on my computer, my disk was 8% fragmented, and it took me about 4 hours to defragment that. So if you have more then that, depending on your hardware, it may take a while for you to finish. However, once done the speed your will gain will have made it all worth doing. Please, feel free to leave a comment if this helped you or not.

~Dave