Today we are going to talk about the advantages of defragging your computer. Defragging your system is almost as important as backing up your system. A healthy computer will outperform a computer of the same specifications by a mile if it is tuned up and healthy. One of the factors that contribute to a healthy computer is defragging. All Windows systems from have a built in Defrag program that will do a basic job for you but it is not necessarily the best. Before we get into defrag programs, let’s talk a bit about exactly what defragging your computer does.
Defragging is the process of putting all pieces of your files and programs together. What happens over time as you use your computer is that your files get scattered all the hard drive as you open and close them over the course of a day. Over time, in order to open a single program, the hard drive has to look all over the platter just to find all the components that are needed to get the program to load on your system. This can make the process much slower then it once was. Not only does it make your computer slower but it also causes excessive wear on your drive. The more the arms have to travel across the platter back and forth, the more wear that is generated on the drive.
When you perform a defrag operation, the program looks for all parts of a single program or file and moves all the parts together. Eventually, every program and folder on your computer will be placed so that they can be more easily accessible. This will help speed up your program loading dramatically. If you are using the built in Windows defrag, you will find that often times it will not fully finish. This is common in many systems especially if you have not performed the operation in a while. When this happens, it is usually best to get a third party program to use in place of the Windows version. The one that I use and I find it to be excellent is Diskeeper. It is a paid program but it is worth every penny. This program has loads of features and the best part is that it is totally automatic. Once you have the program installed, there are only a few things needed to get yourself set up and running. Once the first run is completed, the program will defrag your files on the fly as you go. Your system will never suffer from defrag problems again. Not only is the defrag performed on the fly but the program also prevents defrag problems before they even occur. The program uses little system resources and is a valuable tool to have on your computer.
If you prefer not to pay, there are many free programs that you can use as well. Most of them will not perform the operations automatically but if you run the program once a week or so, the benefits will be noticed.
One misconception of defragging is that you gain disk space. This just does not happen. It might appear that way on the graph because the defrag operation moves all the files to the front of the drive so that most of the empty space on the drive in all together. You might think that the operation is hard on your hard drive since it thrashes it so much while performing the operation. This is just not true. The benefits of defragging are a win win across the board.
http://www.computergeeksonline.net/
Author: Joseph Zelenak, Staff Writer
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