Speed up your computer

A simple, yet often overlooked Windows utility for adding a little zip to your computer is the Windows Disk Defragmenter.  It's free, built into all versions of Windows, and provides a quick easy tune-up on your computer hard disk drive.

To start the Disk Defragmenter; Click your START menu, select Programs | Accessories | System Tools | Disk Defragmenter.  Once the Disk Defragmenter starts, Click the Defragment button and away you go.  Once it completes (a few hours later), I recommend a reboot.  You will surely notice a difference in how fast your computer boots (starts) up.  You will notice a difference in how fast your applications load and run.  I would recommend running a disk defrag once a week.

OK, I know, the super techies in the room are saying "no duh, this is pretty obvious".  Yes and no.  I would argue that for most people, they may have heard of defragmenting their hard disk, but they either neglect to do it or don't know how. 

So what is disk defragmenting?  Let me try to explain with a pie analogy...

Your computers' hard disk is a round platter that spins.  As it spins, data is written and read.  Ideally, when data is read, it is read sequentially.  That is, all of the data is aligned.  If the data is spread all over the hard disk, your hard drive has to look in many different, non-contiguous places to get the data.  Consider the following "pie-like" representation of a hard disk:

This is a representation (albeit simplistic and sad) of a fragmented hard disk.  When your computer reads the data, it needs to jump around the hard disk.  To optimize the speed of your hard drive, you want it to read the data in contiguous chunks.  For example:

In this picture, all of the data segments are aligned next to each other, allowing your hard drive to read the data in a smooth, contiguous, sequential manner.

So how does a hard disk get defragmented?  When data is written to your hard disk, it is written in the first available spot.  This may not be the optimal spot, simply the next available.  In addition, as you remove programs or delete data (documents, spreadsheets, etc), this leaves gaps on your hard disk (similar to the first pie).  Periodically running your Disk Defragmenter utility will straighten this all out.

There are 3rd party applications that you can buy from your local computer store (or on the popup-ad laden Internet) that claim to defragment your disk drive and speed things up.  I would not recommend any of these applications.  Unless you have some data intensive, multi-gigabyte, super application, these programs will do nothing more for you than the built in Windows disk defragmenter.

This weekend, give your computer a good disk defragmenting.  You will not regret it!

Related Links:

• Optimizing Windows Startup Programs
• Keeping your Windows Desktop Organized
• Disk Defragmenter @ Wikipedia