Defragging Your Computer

So you may ask “why should I periodically defrag my computer?“.

Defragging your computer will help keep it in the best operating condition available.

Next you may ask “What is it actually doing?”

When you first received your computer, it generally had an operating system (in this case Windows <version you are running>) installed on a completely blank hard drive. Over time you have saved and deleted files. Sometimes, the system will try and save a file to a space too small for the complete file, so it will break up the file into smaller pieces, or fragments, so that it can fit the file on available space on the disk. It will do this on any blank space available (regardless of location). The more spread out the fragments are on the hard drive, the harder the drive has to work. By defragging your computer, it is recombining fragments into a consolidated disk space. With all the data in this consolidated space, the hard drive spends less time searching for the pieces. If your hard drive has less work to do, the quicker the document will open. It’s better for you, and better for your hard drive.

Now you may ask yourself “How do I run this awesome piece of software?”

Here is a great how to:

http://windows.about.com/od/maintainandfix/ss/defragment.htm