No matter how amazingly fast and advanced your system is when you purchase it, every computer is destined to a future of slow performance and eventual obseletion. The fact is that the technology inside our systems stays the same while new computers outpace it by leaps and bounds every six months or so.
The frustration we feel when confronted by slow performance is universal. When we consider its impact on our use, from diminished productivity in the office to its interruption of our home use, we can see that there s more to our reaction than mere impatience. Sluggish performance is a common problem that can be attributed to a number of causes, one of the most common and easy to correct is a fragmented hard drive.
Fragmentation occurs when the data on your hard drive is no longer sequentially ordered. To get a better idea of how this happens, let s use letters to show two programs on your hard drive, file A and file B. When they re saved on your hard drive, they might look something like this:
A A A _ B B B
You ll notice there s a space between those files. That s because windows will start writing a file wherever it happens to be on the hard drive when you begin saving. Other operating systems don t do this, and so they don t fragment (and therefore require defragmentation). The problem is when your computer wants to save file C. If your hard drive happens to be on that space between A and B, you might wind up with something like this:
A A A C B B B C C
Now when your system tries to pull file C from your hard drive, it will have to take the first part from one section of your hard drive, then move to the location where the other parts are. This means it will take longer for file C to be loaded properly. After many months of adding, changing, and deleting files, you may wind up with something that looks more like this:
A A A C D D E C C F F E E
Now many of your files are broken up, and so each one takes longer to load than it normally would. When you consider that every program you run on your computer is calling up dozens of different files, any number of which may be broken up several times, it s easy to see why your computer has slowed to a crawl.
Defragmentation is the answer to this problem. As its name suggests, defragmentation reverses the state of fragmentation, sequentially ordering your data for faster retrieval. Defragmentation can be performed by any number of tools, all readily available on the internet. While you can always use the defragmentation tool that comes with your Windows operating system, Geek Choice has found two excellent free programs that might suit your needs a little better. You can download them here: Free Defragmentation Downloads. To ensure optimal performance of the computer, we advise you to perform defragmentation once a month.
Remember that defragging your system will only correct the issue of fragmented data. The unfortunate fact is that all computers will eventually become outdated and incapable of running new programs. If you find that defragging your system is not solving your slow performance issues, you may be in need of a hardware upgrade as well.
Should you have any additional questions about defragmentation or other ways to improve your computer s performance, simply call 1 800 GEEK HELP or visit www.GeekChoice.com to schedule an appointment with one of our qualified technicians.
Author Resource:
Gregg Housh holds the position of Technician Manager at Geek Choice. At Geek Choice we solve computer problems such as: http://www.geekchoice.com Slow computer, http://www.geekchoice.com/virus-and-spyware-cleanup.php Virus Removal, http://www.geekchoice.com/virus-and-spyware-cleanup.php Spyware Removal, Computer startup problems, Printer not printing, Not connecting to the Internet, the "blue screen of death", and much more.
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