Defragging your Hard Drive

A fight broke out between two computer geeks and this line was said in anger, "Go Defrag yourself!" Whoooah, can you believe that geeks could be so brutal with each other...well, Defragging isn't a bad thing, it's a good thing, really it is. When you install and delete programs on your computer it stores it in different areas, the more you install or delete the more fragmented your hard drive is...this basically means that instead of all the information and computer programs being in one neat place, there are bits of data all over the place (over simplified, but for the sake of everyone understanding that's what happens). When your drive is fragmented it will make it slower, make it run a little sluggish, and could even cause some computer problems. So, we're going to learn how to defrag a hard drive (basically neaten up where everything is stored).

Quick way to get to defrag program:

First you want to click on the Start button (located in the lower left of your screen)...now depending on what operating system you're using this next step might be a tiny bit different for you, but its pretty much the same...go to All Programs if you're in XP then select Accessories and then system tools....in the system tools you'll find the defrag program which will look like this:

Now, you can click the Analyze button and that will tell you if your hard drive needs to be defragged...if it doesn't you don't have to, if it does you click on the Defragment button. Then the program will begin defragging your hard drive.

These steps are almost exact for Windows 98, just click on Start, Accessories, System tools and you'll find your defrag program there. The defrag will look similar to the XP one, only not as good looking :o) Just proceed and defrag hard drive. It's just that simple.

You can also access the defrag program by going to my computer and right clicking on the hard drive and then clicking properties and then going to the tool menu.

Defragging might take awhile depending on how fast your system is and how big your hard drive is...also note that in windows 98 you might have to exit out of your Virus Scanning program if you can't defrag. Sometimes the virus scanner will cause troubles with win 98's defrag program...I haven't had this problem on Windows XP or 2k...so I believe it is a Win 98 and 95 problem.

So, as we began this article, when someone says, "Go defrag yourself" do it, you'll feel better for it and your computer will thank you!