Programs that are stored onto your Hard Drive can end up being a convoluted mess if you happen to be the type of PC owner who loves to  download, delete and then download again. Whe you download a new program, your computer automatically goes for the nearest blank space on your hard drive to insert pieces of the program and when that area is filled up, it jumps to the next space and continues to do so until the entire program ends up scattered throughout hard drive. This practice ends up slowing down your computer and the best solution for you is to Defrag your Hard Drive.

Think of as a parking garage for digitized information

To get a more visual grasp on what is going on, let us imagine that our Hard Drive is a giant parking garage and that a  program is a fleet of cars (each car being a different piece of information)  that we just brought in and need to park. Now our PC, playing the role of the Valet, has the task of parking this new fleet of cars in the already crowded garage. While it would be nice to line them up in a nice, neat row the PC valet has no time for this and merely grabs each car in turn and parks each of them in the nearest available spot that it happens to come upon, scattering the fleet all over the structure.  While this is not the most efficient way to do things, it is the fastest way to do it at the time and the PC valet gives itself a nice pat on the back for a job well done.

But, then when we come back with our ticket wishing to retrieve our fleet of cars (i.e. open a program),  the PC is now forced to rush all over the garage like a maniac in order to get all the cars that we need.  This of course takes time and ends up making the retrieval process slow. If only the poor PC valet was not rushed so much and had time to move around all the cars in the garage so that all the ones that belonged to the same program were parked closer to each other. If it was allowed to do this, then retrieving a certain fleet of cars would end up being a much quicker process.

In this scenario, the disk defragmenter can be seen as a team of crack Valets that had been hired by the management to get things nice and organized. When initiated, they come in and began to move all the cars around so that all the ones that  belong to the same program fleet  are parked as close to each other as possible. This process takes a bit a time, shutting down the garage for a hour or two. But when it is done, the place is now nice and streamlined and the the lowly PC valet does not have to run all away to Timbuktu and back in order to grab each car that it needs for a specific program.

How to Defrag

The steps to defragmentation are relatively simple ones to follow. Before you do it, you want to first make sure all other programs are shut off. Now go, to your Start menu on the bottom left hand corner, click it and then click on Programs, move your pointer to the Accessories tab, then down to System Tools where you will find the DIsk Defragmenter option about halfway down the list. Click on it, wait a few seconds and a prompt screen should pop up displaying your various hard drives. Choose the drive you want to re organize (most likely the C drive) and then initiate the process.

If this is your first time Defragging your drive, do not be surprised if it ends up taking a long time to finish up. It is best to do it at the end of the day, when you have nothing left to do on the computer. Tooling around on the computer while it is trying to defrag your drive will end up slowing it down considerably, so go watch television or do some laundry instead.  Also, it might be a good idea to run the Disk Cleanup option first, in order to get rid of anything that you do not need to defrag anyway.

Defragging your Hard Drive is a good way to boost the operating speed of your computer, enabling it to run in a more efficient manner. It is recommended that you do this at least twice a month in order to ensure optimal PC performance.