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How do I defrag my PC - Easy Tutorial

By Kris Mainieri

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 06Jul2008 Word count: 547 Viewed: 485 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

Ever wondered why even your most up-to-date pc can become really slow at times? Have it ever entered your mind that when you uninstall programs, empty spaces are left on the hard disk? These empty spaces are what cause your pc to slow down significantly. Why? Because when you do install new programs, your computer assigns a memory block to the first available space it sees and scatters the rest throughout every empty space it sees. When you need to use this program, the computer will go through everything to gather the scattered memory blocks and this takes a lot of time which makes your computer slow.

Defragmenting your hard drive will definitely make your computer run faster since it moves all the related blocks of a certain program close together. In this way, the machine does not have to look over the entire drive to gather these related parts together to make the program work. Defragmenting the hard drive will certainly make your computer's operation optimal and more efficient. To ensure that you will get the best out of defragmenting your computer's hard drive, it is recommended for you to defrag it at least twice a month.

A thing to take note of is that defragmenting takes time especially if you have a cluttered hard drive. Thus, you really have to make some time for this since it can take hours for it to finish. It is not advisable, however, to leave your computer defragmenting overnight. You can schedule the defragmenting process when you are about to go out of the house for lunch or to attend a class or a meeting.

So, how do you start the defragmenting process? Simple, just follow these steps and you are on your way to having a faster computer.

First, you have to make sure that you are logged in to your computer with an administrator access, especially if different user accounts are present in the machine. Once you have access, you can now go to the Disk Defragmenter Tool in Windows found in System Tools. You can get access of the System Tools option by clicking the Start button, then All Programs, and then Accessories. You can find the System Tools option in the Accessories menu.

Once you are in the Disk Defragmenter window, you will see a list of all the drives that you can defragment. Now, choose the drive that you want to defragment and click the Defragment button. The tool will analyze your drive first before actually defragmenting it. You can monitor the status of the defragmenting process through the status bar at the bottom.

You will know that defragmenting process is done when there are no more red lines representing fragmented files are left on the drive and all similar files represented by blue lines have been grouped together. A pop-up window will also notify you if the process has been completed. Upon completion, you can now exit the Disk Defragmenter Tool by clicking Exit on the File menu or by simply clicking the X button on the upper right hand corner.

With these easy steps in defragmenting your hard drive, you can be assured that with regular maintenance, your pc will be running smoothly and efficiently every time.

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