3 Simple Steps To Keep Your Hard Drive Fit
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Copyright (C) 2001 by Phil Rigby
It's all too easy for a PC's hard drive to end up as the
equivalent of a "couch potato".
Like the person who scarfs down too much beer and chips, and
fails to follow a regular program of health maintenance, your
PC can gradually accumulate "fat" and begin to drastically slow
down.
There's nothing particularly difficult in correcting this
problem. You just need to make a little time to carry out a few
simple procedures.
1) Get in shape - Defragment your hard drive
One of the most overlooked areas of the PC is its hard drive.
Over time, the clusters of data get fragmented and chains of
data blocks become spread all over the surfaces of the drive
platters. This slows down file accesses, sometimes quite
dramatically.
You'll notice this if applications are slow to start up, and
you can hear a lot of clicking from the hard drive read heads.
You should regularly defragment the drive, to pack the data
more efficiently and shorten file chains.
To do this, shut down your system and restart it in DOS mode,
which you should see as an option on the shutdown menu.
When the machine has rebooted and displays the DOS prompt,
enter the command
defrag c: /f
Press Enter, and this will start Microsoft's defrag program.
The "/f" switch tells the program to perform a full defrag
operation. There are other options but I would only select a
full defrag.
You may have a system configured with more than one drive
partition. For example, in addition to the standard C: drive I
also have drives D: through H: on my PC. I need to repeat the
defrag command for each of the individual drive letters.
Note that your system may have a utility suite, such as Norton
or Nuts and Bolts. This means that you may well have a defrag
program that can be run under Windows itself, so there would be
no need to reboot into DOS mode.
2) Lose the flab - Remove unnecessary files from your disk
As time goes by, hard drives tend to get more and more
cluttered with rubbish and unused applications.
You should regularly empty your Internet browser cache, and
delete all temporary files (anything in the Windows/temp
directory, for example). Use the Find dialog to search for
files with a name of the form '*.tmp', '*.~mp' and '*.chk'. You
can safely delete these.
And go through your inventory of installed programs. You may
often find that there's software on your system that may only
have been used once, or not at all. In this case, remove it by
using the Add/Remove Programs dialog in the Control Panel.
Of course, you should ensure that you have the original
diskettes or CDs for applications you intend to delete, so that
you can later reinstall them if required.
Make sure your hard drive always has at least 10% minimum free
space.
3) Avoid stress - Disable power management for desktop PCs
By default, Windows will enforce power management procedures
that involve shutting down a compliant monitor and spinning
down the hard drive after a preset interval of inactivity.
When you next hit the keyboard or use the mouse the system will
spin the drive back up to operating speed. This is a stressful
operation and should be avoided where possible.
There is no need for power management on a desktop system that
is connected to mains electricity. It's only justified to
preserve the battery power of portable PCs.
To switch off this facility on your desktop system, do the
following;
For Windows 95, select Start, then Settings, then Control Panel
then double-click on Power. Clear the check box that reads
"Allow Windows to manage power usage on this computer". Then
you need to click on the Disk Drives tab and clear that check
box also.
For Windows 98 or Me, go to Start, Settings, Control Panel,
Power Management, Power Schemes, Home/Office Desk, Turn Off
Hard Disks, and select Never.
So, get your hard disk into shape, cut down on the fat and
avoid unnecessary stress. It's easy!
---------------------------------------------------------------
Phil Rigby is the "Secure Netpreneur - Doing Safe Net Business"
http://www.secure-netpreneur.com
Now you can make your Windows PC "Invisible and Bulletproof"
and, what's more, do it for FREE! Send a blank email to
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