Your hard drives should be defragmented a couple of times a year.
When a file that is written to the hard disk is deleted, it leaves a gap of
available space on the hard disk. The next file that is written to the disk is
saved to the first open spot on the disk, which may be the gap left by the
deleted file. If the new file does not fit completely in the gap, the part that
fits is stored in the gap and the remaining fragment is stored in the next
open spot.
The file may be fragmented into many chunks, if necessary, to fit
in open gaps. When the hard disk has to locate all the parts of a fragmented
file before displaying it, the file takes longer to display than it would if the
file were not fragmented. This decreases the computer’s performance and
slows its response to user requests. Disk Defragmenter is an application that
reorders file fragments so that complete files are stored contiguously on the
disk, which improve the computer’s performance and responsiveness. Because of the importance of keeping files together, it’s important to
run Disk Defragmenter a few times a year (or more). As with Disk Cleanup,
you can use Scheduled Tasks to remind you when it’s time to do this. By
default, you can’t schedule Disk Defragmenter, and it isn’t listed as an
option, so you have to cheat the system a little and use the nifty trick I’ll
show you here.
To trick Scheduled Tasks into running Disk Defragmenter:
1. Open Control Panel and then open Scheduled Tasks. (If you’re using
Category view, click Performance And Maintenance first.)
2. Click Add Scheduled Task. Click Next to start the wizard.
3. Disk Defragmenter will not be available in the Application list . Click Browse.
4. On the root drive, generally C:, browse to Windows | System32 |
defrag.exe, as shown in Figure . Do not choose dfrg.msc.
(You may or may not see the filename extensions.) Click Open. 
5. Name the task Disk Defragmenter, and select Monthly. Click Next.
6. Choose a start time (e.g., at night just before you go to bed), and
select two to four months of the year. Select the day of the month to
run the task. shows a workable schedule. Click Next.
7. Enter and confirm the password for
your account. Click Next. 
8. Select Open Advanced Properties For This Task When I Click Finish, and then click Finish.
9. Verify that the schedule and other properties are correct, and make changes as necessary. Make sure the task is enabled (check Enabled), and view the options under the
Settings tab. Click OK. The task will now run on this schedule
and defragment your drive automatically
(Exempt taken from "HARDCORE WINDOWS THE STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE TO ULTIMATE PERFORMANCE" by Joli Ballew - McGraw-Hill/Osborne)
|
