When
you defrag your machine, you are making your machine work better. Defragging puts
all of the pieces needed to run your program in a close proximity to each other
on the hard drive. When you delete programs in your hard drive, you leave empty
spaces where pieces of the program were inserted during installation. When you
load a new program, the computer goes to the first available slot to place all
the parts, so your program could be loading pieces at the beginning, middle and
end. This forces your hard drive to hunt all over in accessing all the pieces
and putting them together to run your application. By defragging the machine,
all the program pieces will be moved and put together so your hard drive can run
optimally and access programs as fast as it is capable of doing. In Win98, the
machine is smart enough to realize which program you use most often and make them
more accessible in the hard drive itself so that it can be accessed even more
quickly.
Defragging your machine should be part of your regular maintenance.
Twice a month should keep your machine running at optimal level. If you load and
delete programs often, then defrag more often.
Before
defragging your machine, close all open Windows programs.
Step
1:
Start/Programs/Accessories/System Tools/ScanDisk
Follow
this shorthand until you open ScanDisk. If you have not done a ScanDisk in awhile,
I would suggest clicking on Thorough. If you have a weekly schedule for maintenance,
then just the Standard will be sufficient. Select the hard drive you wish to scan
and click on start. After this process is finished, go to the next step.
Follow the shorthand steps until you open Disk Defragmenter.
Select the
drive to defrag and click ok and it will defrag your hard drive.
Another
way :
Double click on My Computer and right click on the drive
you wish to defrag. Select properties. Go to the Tool tab. You can select the
button Check Now by Error-Checking Status to use the ScanDisk tool, then select
the button Defragment Now by Defragmentation status.
Depending on how large
your hard drive is, this process will take anywhere from 20 minutes to over an
hour.
It is advisable to do this at the end of the day when you don't need
to use your machine.
