Run Defrag on your hard drive

Posted on Aug 13, 2007 by Paul White

Defrag is part of general computer maintainence.  When you use your computer, files are constantly being written to your hard drive. Your computer tries to write files in one single chunk, but there are times when your computer needs to split up a file into several smaller chunks( fragmented ), so it can maximize disk space.  This causes latency when you try to load this file.  After many files on your harddrive become fragmented, you need to defrag your harddrive.  Over time defrag can slow down your system.  If you have never ran defrag before this can make significant performance increase.  Follow the steps below to defrag your computer

Start >> Programs >> Accessories >> System Tools >> Disk Defragmenter

This shows all the hard drives on your system.  Most all computers will have a C: drive which would be your primary harddrive
Some computers may have multiple hard drives, which would be labeled by E, F or any other letter of the alphabet that is not used by another drive.
The first thing we want to do is analyze each of the drives to see which ones need to be defragmented.
click on the drive to highlight it, and then click "Analyze"


After your computer has analyzed the drive, you will see a band like this that shows you how your drive is organized.
The red bands are fragmented files, these are what you should be worried about.  In this case my C drive is not that fragmented. So I do not need to run Defrag on this drive at this time.  Next I will check my F Drive


Well my F drive was pretty fragmented.  Many times after running Analyze the computer will prompt you letting you know that you need to defrag your drive, at this time.  It was obvious that I needed to do it so I clicked "Defragment".


Defrag can take many hours depending on your harddrive.  As it works you will be able to see its progress on the lower bar.
Once the lower bar is all blue it is finished.  The System will prompt you when its finished.

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