by Des Meisenhelter

Created on: March 13, 2010

From time to time computer hard drives or disks become slower due to file fragmentation. That is pieces of files are moved further apart thus taking the disk longer to piece them together. Loss can also occur from larger files and greater number of files on the disk becoming fragmented and when the operating system has deleted or overwritten files.

It all sounds complicated and probably is to us laypeople. I guess an overs implication is to picture a jigsaw puzzle when first dumped onto the board; there are bits and pieces all over the place with no corresponding ones linking together.

All of this fragmentation needs to be regularly put back together. Doing so speeds up the disk search and improves the overall performance of your computer. Look at it like housekeeping, cleaning up files and folders, deleting duplicate files along with disk defragmentation makes for a better performing computer.

How to do it is easy and there is a utility built into windows operating system “Disk Defragmenter” that works quite well. There are other “free” utilities that you can also download and one is “Auslogics Disk Defrag” which is a lightweight but excellent program.  So which is the better of the two? Both work well, according to reviewers the Auslogics one is the better.

Using the windows utility click on:

·         Start
·         All programs
·         Accessories
·         System tools
·         Disk defragmenter

Run the program by selecting which drive you wish to defrag, perhaps if you have more than one disk select all. You can also automate the program but to set this up it will take quite some time to do and explain here. Additionally, it will depend on the operating system that you are currently using. E.g. windows early versions (98,Me) will differ on where to select the program from later versions such as windows 7.

By all means try the windows utility and see if you like it, otherwise download and install “Auslogics Disk Defragmenter” from here: http://www.auslogics.com/en/software/disk-defrag/ and run it. The interface is clean and simple, select a drive that you wish to defrag, click on:

·         Action
·         Analyze
·         Selected

A graphical interface will quickly analyze the disk then show you whether the disk needs fragmenting or not. The program then indicates the percentage of that disk that needs defragmenting and how many files are included. If you click on “action” again you can select the program to defrag just the files as opposed to the whole of disk.

You can program or schedule automated disk defragmentation by clicking on:

Settings Program settings Schedule

Then simply click on how often you want the program to defrag your disk or disks and at what time. This is far easier and runs more quickly that the utility built into windows. It runs on XP through to 7.

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