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A good way to speed up your computer and maintain its performance is to defrag the hard drive. As a hard drive fills up with data, it is harder for the computer to store data sequentially on the drive. The data is scattered among different unused sectors, wherever there is room. Hard drives have a little arm, much like the one on a old stereo or record player, that moves across the platters of the drive gathering (reading) the data to be used in programs. In electronic terms this is a very slow process.  When the data is scattered the arm has to move more at a high rate of speed and this puts wear-and-tear on its parts.  It also slows the hard drive down.

Defragging put files together sequentially, reducing the the takes for the arm to gather it. It’s good to include defragging in your computer’s regular maintenance schedule. It will not only optimize the computer, it will also put less wear-and-tear on the arm and other parts of the drive and lengthen the life of the drive. This will reduce the amount and cost of computer repair over the life of the computer.

Windows has its own defragmentation utility that you can use. It is built into Windows. Here is a video from Microsoft about how to use it.

At Ducktoes we use Auslogics Defrag. It’s totally free and works fast. It’s been rated “Outstanding” by Cnet’s Download.com.

Here’s a video about Auslogics Defrag.

At Ducktoes we can help you maintain and repair your computer or help you learn how to do it yourself.