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Speed up your computer by optimising your Hard Drive

Disk Defragmenter

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. 

Note: Disk Defragmenter is a very slow process. 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.