How To Defragment A Computer
There are many different reasons as to why your computer may be running slow. It could be due to a virus or it could be because of all the files stored on your computer. When you download a program and install it, the files are placed in specific locations on the hard drive. If you install programs and then delete a few there will be dead space left in between the files causing your computer to run slow.
Defragmenting your computer can lead to
- Overall improved performance
- Quicker boot up times
- Quicker program load times
- Faster searching of files
When you defragment your hard drive files are moved from the place that they currently reside into an open area that is closer to the center of the hard drive. The closer the file is to the center the quicker it can be accessed.
Defragment your computer in Windows XP
In order to begin defragmenting your computer you need to load up the Disk Defragmenter that is automatically installed on Windows XP. Click on Start->All Programs->Accessories->System Tools-Disk Defragmenter.
Once you have done that the Disk Defragmenter will load up and we can begin the process.
From here you can choose to either Analyze the drive in which Disk Defragmenter will scan it and let you know whether or not it believes that it needs to be defragmented.
You will notice at the bottom of the screen is a legend explaining what colors mean what. Because this is a default installation of Windows Xp there is still a lot of free space on the computer and barely any fragmented files. Your results will probably have a lot more red, blue and green and less white.
If the Disk Defragmenter decides that your computer does not need to be defragmented you can still continue the process. Just click the Defragment button and let it run.
This is what you will see after clicking the Defragment button. You will notice that the lower gray bar shows the status and below that there is a Pause and Stop button. It is advised that while defragmenting your computer not to work on it and have as little programs running as possible. Anything that moves files or updates them on your computer can cause the defragmenter to slow down or even possibly start over.
The status bar at the bottom of the window alerts you to what exactly is going on as well as a progress bar.
Once the Disk Defragmenter has performed it’s task a dialog box will pop open explaining that it is complete and giving you an option to view the report or close the window. Viewing the report just gives you detailed statistics on what exactly went on such as the percentage of files that were fragmented, the free space before and after along with other information. See the updated image? Notice how the blue is one continuous color now, the files have been compressed together making your programs load quicker.
Defragmenting your computer can help with increasing performance but it can take some time depending upon the size of your hard drive, the amount of files and the fragmentation of those files. I’ve had some computers run overnight when I defragmented them!
Defragment your computer in Windows Vista
I have heard a lot of complaints that the default disk defragmenter in Vista doesn’t perform as well as the one in XP. However, I am still going to provide instructions on how to use the one in Vista.
Click the Windows logo->All Programs->Accessories->System Tools->Disk Defragmenter.
From here you can schedule the Disk Defragmenter to run daily, weekly, monthly and so on. Once you are ready to defragment your computer click on the Defragment now… button.
From here you can select to defragment all the disks on your computer or select certain ones. Once you select which drives you would like to defragment click the OK button.
As you can see, not a whole lot of information is given in the Vista version. No progress bar, no graph of the files, no pause button…the only thing that you can do is cancel the defragmentation. The only indicator of progress is the line of text saying that it could take a few minutes of a few hours. I know it’s not very helpful at all but like I stated before, a lot of people have been irritated with the defragmenter.
Disk Defragmenting Programs
If you have any other programs to defragment your computer that you use and would like to recommend to CLG readers, feel free to recommend them below in the comments section.
3 Comments
November 6th, 2008 at 11:41 pm
My recommendation for an alternative to the Windows defragger would be Diskeeper 08. I chose it over freeware programs as the advanced automatic defrag options, low free space defrag etc are extremely efficient.
November 7th, 2008 at 12:57 am
Thanks for the recommendation amethyst :) Adding it to the list :)
February 15th, 2009 at 11:53 am
[...] programs can leave files scattered throughout your hard drive decreasing it’s efficiency. Defragmenting your computer organizes the files spread throughout the hard drive decreasing the time that your computer has to [...]