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Maintaining
Your Hard Drive - 1
Those
of our readers who are moving house will know the
scene. Boxes of stuff scattered throughout the old
house, furniture moved about but always in the way,
and piles of belongings yet to be packed. Finding
something you need in the middle of the move always
takes twice as long—you are not sure which box it is
in. Then there is the great unload at the other end,
with all its attended sorting and organizing things
into new places.
You
may be surprised, but a similar scenario already
occurs in your home on a daily basis. When you use
your computer, your files are regularly moved about on
the hard drive. This constant moving of files creates
a situation on your hard drive known as ‘fragmentation’.
Fragmentation
occurs something like this. Suppose you are typing a
letter, and partway through you save it to your hard
drive. Next day, you open up the letter, type a few
more sentences, and then save it again. When you save
your letter the second time, it will not be saved in
the same physical location on your hard drive. The
space used the first time you saved it, is now left as
a gap, which the computer must skip over when it
searches for something on the hard drive.
This
moving and saving of files on your hard drive, over
time, greatly increases the time required for your PC
to find a document you have asked it to open. Multiply
this process by the number of files on your computer,
and you will see how significantly slower your PC will
be. Thankfully, your Windows operating system has
several hard drive maintenance programs built-in which
we can use to correct this problem.
The
first of these programs, known as Scandisk, should
always be run first before any other maintenance
program. Scandisk checks your hard drive for file
errors that might interfere with the running of your
PC. If Scandisk finds errors, it will let you know the
results, and give you the opportunity to correct them.
Finding Scandisk on your PC varies depending on your
version of Windows. For Windows 95, 98, and ME, go to
Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools, and you
will see the Scandisk link. For Windows 2000 and XP,
you can find Scandisk (called Error Checking) by going
to My Computer, and right-clicking on C: drive. Then
click Properties, then Tools.
The
next program to keep your hard drive in good shape is
called Disk Defragmenter. This handy program searches
your hard drive from the beginning, looking for gaps
in the file structure. Any gaps are filled with files
taken from the end of the hard drive, thus keeping all
the files together. This streamlines your hard drive’s
file structure, preventing errors and increasing PC
speed. You can find Disk Defragmenter in the same
locations in Windows as is Scandisk.
Stay
tuned. We will discuss how to best use Disk
Defragmenter in our next column.
If you have any
questions or problems running these hard disk
maintenance programs, you can contact us on 4163 8061,
or email us at info@mcsyarraman.com.au.
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