Box Off My Computer

Why Defragment Your Computer?

When your computer writes information onto your hard drive, it does not always write information in the same place on the actual hardware. A section of a file can be written near the beginning of the disc, whereas the rest of that file could be written near the end. This can cause programs to run slowly, as the computer spends time inretrieving these file clusters from all over the disc. Defragmenting your computer sorts all of your files [as well as free space] in an orderly fashion, in effort to reduce loading time.

There a few things you should do before a disk defragment.

- Uninstall any programs you do not need.

- Disk Clean Up

- Close any open programs

Things to bare in mind before you start

- Defrag can take a few hours to complete, make sure you have enough battery power.

- Defrag should be completed only if you are suffering performance issues and not too often.

- Ensure you're not scheduled for an anti-virus scan or a windows update during the defrg process.

To launch Disk Defragmenter

Go to Start Menu > Programs (or All Programs) > Accessories >

System Tools > Disk Defragmenter

You will then be promted to give your permission click 'Continue'

If your computer is Windows Vista you will be asked to schedule defragmenting choose this if you like otherwise click 'Defragment Now'

A box will open asking which drives to defrag, tick the boxes then click 'OK'

Defragmentation will now begin...

Now sit back and relax whilst defrag does its job. It can take some time so we suggest you leave it to it.