Defragment Disk Drive
Posted by Tony Peterson
Has your computer's performance slowed down over time? One of the causes may be that your hard disk needs to be defragmented.
From your START Menu, select "My Computer" - which will bring up a window showing your disk drives. Locate the icon that represents your hard disk drive, usually indicated as drive letter "C:". Using the right button on your mouse, right-click the icon and a drop down menu will appear. Using your left mouse button, click on "Properties". This will bring up the Properties window for your disk drive.
Click on the"Tools" tab. Then click on the "Defragment Now" button. This will bring up the Disk Defragmenter window. At the bottom of this window, click the "Analyze" button. The program will then run an analysis of your disk drive fragmentation.
After the analysis is complete, a window will pop up indicating whether or not you need to defragment the volume (disk). If prompted to do so, click on the "Defragment" button and the process will start running to defragment your disk drive. This could take 20-30 minutes or more, depending on the size of your disk drive, the amount of data on your drive, and the extent of the fragmentation. Once the defragmentation is complete, a window will pop up letting you know, and you can then close the defragmentation windows.
Sometimes I notice a lot of red in the graphic after I run the analysis, indicating fragmentation of the drive - but the process will tell me that I do not need to defragment the volume. When I see a fair amount of red in this case, I click on the "Defragment" button anyway so that it keeps my disk drive in top performance.
For more information on this process refer to Microsoft's Knowledgebase entry 305781 (Windows XP).
From your START Menu, select "My Computer" - which will bring up a window showing your disk drives. Locate the icon that represents your hard disk drive, usually indicated as drive letter "C:". Using the right button on your mouse, right-click the icon and a drop down menu will appear. Using your left mouse button, click on "Properties". This will bring up the Properties window for your disk drive.
Click on the"Tools" tab. Then click on the "Defragment Now" button. This will bring up the Disk Defragmenter window. At the bottom of this window, click the "Analyze" button. The program will then run an analysis of your disk drive fragmentation.
After the analysis is complete, a window will pop up indicating whether or not you need to defragment the volume (disk). If prompted to do so, click on the "Defragment" button and the process will start running to defragment your disk drive. This could take 20-30 minutes or more, depending on the size of your disk drive, the amount of data on your drive, and the extent of the fragmentation. Once the defragmentation is complete, a window will pop up letting you know, and you can then close the defragmentation windows.
Sometimes I notice a lot of red in the graphic after I run the analysis, indicating fragmentation of the drive - but the process will tell me that I do not need to defragment the volume. When I see a fair amount of red in this case, I click on the "Defragment" button anyway so that it keeps my disk drive in top performance.
For more information on this process refer to Microsoft's Knowledgebase entry 305781 (Windows XP).