During the
course of you using your pc you will, undoubtedly, open, update, and generally
change many files. During this process the alterations you make to a file are
held in memory until such times as you save the document. Now, let us say that
the file you are currently editing is 10K (Kilobytes) in size. That 10K has
already been allocated a place on your hard drive. Let us now suppose that the
editing you are doing to the file adds a further 5K to the file size, making a
total of 15K. Windows has already allocated 10K for the file, and now it is 15K.
Well it doesn’t take a mathematician to realise that your new 15K file will not
fit into the 10K space allocated. So what does Windows do? Well if there is
available free space next to your files original location on the hard drive the
space is expanded to accommodate the latest update. If, which is usually the
case, adjacent space is not available, then Windows dumps the 5K at another free
location on the hard drive. This is okay because Windows knows where it has put
the file and can easily recover it. However it is untidy.
The same
thing happens when you delete a file. Although nothing is physically deleted, the
space occupied by the file you have deleted is marked as free and, until another
file takes its place, Windows leaves a gap.
To make your
hard drive more efficient every ‘piece’ of a file needs to be together (better
known as contiguous). Regularly defragmenting your hard drive does just that. It
makes sure that all your file segments are in a contiguous form on the hard
drive. This makes accessing the file quicker, thus improving performance.
Defragmenting
the hard drive is really straight forward. The first thing you need to do is
click the Start button and then from the Start Menu click on Control panel (see
Fig 1)
Fig 1: Control
Panel
Next look for
the Administrative Tools Icon and click on it. (Fig 2)
Fig 2:
Administrative Tools Window
Next click on the computer
management Icon to open the Computer Management Window (Fig 3)
Fig 3: Computer
management Window
The Computer
Management window is divided into two panes. The pane on the left contains the
main menu items. Take a look at the list of items and then click on the Disk
Defragmenter option. The defragmenter window will then open (Fig 4)
Fig 4: Disk
Defragmenter Windows
As you can see, this window is
divided into three panes. The main menu is on the left. The partition
information relating to your hard drive is situated in the top right pane, while
a hard drive partition graph is situated in the
bottom pane of the main window.
To begin
defragmenting the drive you first need to highlight the drive/partition you want
to defragment (Fig 5).
Fig 5: Selecting
the relevant drive or partition
Once you have done this the window
display will change slightly and you will notice that a number of buttons have
appeared at the bottom of the window. To see if your hard drive needs defragmenting click the Analyse button. The defragmenter will thoroughly check
your drive/partition to see if defragmenting is required.
Once
defragmenter has finished analysing the drive/partition a message will appear
stating, either that the drive does not need defragmenting, or that it does. If
the drive doesn’t need defragmenting then simply close the defragmenter
application window.
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