Computer Slow? Try A Defrag
When helping friends and family with their computers, I like to show them the Microsoft Defrag utility. For one, it’s easy to use, but also, primarily because it really does the trick in helping to speed up disk access and overall system performance.
A Little Background
When you save information to your computer hard drive, it sometimes end up scattered across different areas on the physical disk (kind of like the papers strewn in my office). This is known as fragmentation. Over time, this fragmentation increases, especially when adding or removing lots of data or programs. If this data on your disk is ordered more effectively, you computer can access it more quickly. Hence, the Defrag utility.
Using Defrag
You can access the defrag utility by clicking on Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter. It should look like this:
Click the ‘Analyze’ button to check the fragmentation first, or if you’re the adventurous type, click the ‘Defragment’ button. Depending on the speed of your computer and the degree of fragmentation, this may take a bit of time. Sit and watch the colors change from ‘red’ bad to ‘blue’ good. Or find something else to do for a bit and let this run for awhile.
Note, if your disk is highly fragmented, you may need to run the defragment utility a couple times to straighten your data out. And remember to run this utility every so often (I run it a couple times a month) as standard maintenance.
There you go. You are now an expert on ‘defragging’ and can go help your friends. Now if only I could find a similar utility to help clean up my office.
