Your Question
Answered
FROM: Baffled of Barnet
Question: What is de-fragging? How and why
should I do it?
Answer:
Thanks for your question
Baffled,
Why? – to
de-frag will tidy up
your hard drive and the operation of your machine will be
improved. Many people leave this task for months on end
and some say they have never de-fragged but it is advisable to
de-frag weekly – perhaps first thing on Monday morning when you
are reading your emails. If you have not ‘de-fragged’ for a
long period it will probably take until coffee
break! If
de-fragged weekly, it will take only a few minutes. Although
Windows comes with its own de-fragger, in the Windows 98
version it is really slow. Windows XP’s de-fragger is a
great improvement and is supplied to Microsoft by a company
called Diskeeper in a cut-down
version.
De-fragging
is not
painful. In Windows 98 click the Start button, and choose Run.
Enter the word ‘defrag’ and press OK. This starts the process
off. Sometimes the de-fragmenting process comes to a halt
because it has found a program that is working in the
background. This is most annoying and is not easy to beat. One
way is to check the icons in the system tray (bottom right) and
exit those that are not essential to the running of the
computer. Keep things like your mouse program and any others
you’re not quite sure about, just to be on the safe side. Then
start again.
If you still
have trouble getting de-frag to complete consider
purchasing the full Diskeeper product. It’s not too expensive
and will work with operating systems right back to Windows
95. (Anybody still got that?)
In Windows XP
click Start, Control panel, Performance and maintenance. Now
choose ‘Rearrange items on your hard disk to make programs
run faster’.
Whichever
version of Windows you’ve got, you can upgrade to the
current version of Diskeeper which is now amazingly fast,
works in the background so that you can continue working,
and can be scheduled to run at regular intervals. Take a
look at their web site at:
http://www.diskeeper.com/. You can download a free
trial copy and give it a whirl.
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De-fragging?
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