DEFRAGMENT THE FILE SYSTEM
The storage system on a hard disk is not physically sequential. Files are stored in any available physical area, and the file allocation table (or MFT) keeps track of where each piece of the file resides. Then, when Windows calls for a file, it looks up the location of the file or the locations of the pieces of the file, and then puts the pieces together in memory.
When you initially write a file to disk, it's stored in one contiguous mass, but as you edit the file, the file can become fragmented (that is, pieces stored in nonadjacent spots). As you can imagine, it takes longer to open a fragmented file than an unfragmented one, because the hard disk's read and write head must hop around on the disk, picking up the pieces of the file. That's why defragmenting a hard disk improves its performance. Defragmenting a hard disk rearranges the files stored on it so that each file is stored in a contiguous area.
Defragmenting takes a long time, so you might want to begin it before you go to bed or go out for the evening and let the program run while you're away.
Don't use your computer while it's being defragmented, because every time the content of the hard disk changes, it has to start all over again. Disable your screensaver and antivirus program before running the defragmenter to minimize restarts due to hard disk changes.
To defragment a disk, you can either start from the Tools tab for the drive (right-click the drive in My Computer and select Properties) or you can select Start > All Programs, Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter . The Disk Defragmenter dialog box, shown in Figure 5-2, appears.
Select the drive you want to defragment, and then do one of the following:
- Click Defragment to start defragmenting the drive now.
- Click Analyze to check how badly the drive needs to be defragmented.
If you do the latter, a recommendation appears after a minute or two. From there, you can select whether to defragment.
Defragmenting is a good thing, but some people go nuts with it and defragment every week. That's excessive. Once every few months is okay, and if you forget, that's okay too. You probably won't notice a dramatic difference in system performance between doing it and not doing it.
