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How to defrag your computer for better speed and performance.

Over time you may notice that your computer is moving a bit more slow. Files are taking longer to open, it takes longer to save your work, and your computer takes longer to start up and shut down.

Many things can affect your computer's performance, but one routine task you can do to help get some of the speed back is to defragment your hard drive. As your computer is accessing, modifying, and storing files, these files get moved around and stored in the next available memory cluster on your drive. Depending on where the files are placed on your drive can affect the amount of time it takes to access the files.

All Windows based computers have the ability to defrag the hard drive. For best results this is something that should be done about once a month.

To defrag your Window's based computer:

To maximize the benefits of the defrag program, close all programs that aren't critical to running the computer. Exit out of any web browsers, close any media players such as iTunes or Windows Media Player, save and close any word processing documents, and so forth.

Once you've closed all those extra programs go to your Start menu and select it.

Under the Start Menu, select 'All programs'.

All of your folders and files should open in a menu, go to the 'Accessories' folder.

After selecting the Accessories folder, select the 'System Tools' folder.

You'll see a few systems programs, select the 'disk defragmenter'.

Select the drive you want to defrag, usually your C drive.

Select 'Defragment' and the computer will begin the process.

Depending on your operating system, hard drive size, and available space the process could take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours. To keep it moving fast, try to leave it be and don't use the computer while it is defragmenting the drive.

When finished the system will allow you to see a summary and details of the process and also a graph that shows the state of the drive before and after defragmenting.

After you've defragmented your computer you may also want to do a 'Disk Cleanup'. This can be found under the System Tools folder as well and will clean out your Temporary Internet Files and Recycling Bin. You can also set up a schedule for your computer to run the Disk Defragmenter on a regular basis. This isn't required but is a nice feature if you want to keep your computer running well and don't want to have to remember to run the program monthly.

Mac based systems do not generally have a defragmenter program, so this is a task usually only needed for PCs running Windows.

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