From: Baffled of Barnet

Q.  What is de-fragging? How and why should I do it?

Thanks for your question Baffled,

A.  Why? – to de-frag will clean up your hard drive and the operation of your machine will be improved.  Many people leave this task for months on end and some say they have never de-fragged but it is advisable to de-frag weekly – perhaps first thing on Monday morning when you are reading your emails.  If you have not ‘de-fragged’ for a long period it will probably take until coffee break!   If de-fragged weekly, it will take only a few minutes. Although Windows comes with its own de-fragger, in the Windows 98 version it is really slow. Windows XP’s de-fragger is a great improvement and is supplied to Microsoft by a company called Diskeeper in a cut-down version.

Defragging is not painful. In Windows 98/XP click the Start button, and choose Run. Enter the word ‘defrag’ and press OK. This starts the process off. Sometimes the de-fragmenting process comes to a halt because it has found a program that is working in the background. This is most annoying and is not easy to beat. One way is to check the icons in the system tray (bottom right) and exit those that are not essential to the running of the computer. Keep things like your mouse program and any others you’re not quite sure about, just to be on the safe side. Then start again. 

If you still have trouble getting de-frag to complete consider purchasing the full Diskeeper product. It’s not too expensive and will work with operating systems right back to Windows 95. (Anybody still got that?)

In Windows XP click Start, Control panel, Performance and maintenance. Now choose ‘Rearrange items on your hard disk to make programs run faster’.

Whichever version of Windows you’ve got, you can upgrade to the current version of Diskeeper which is now amazingly fast, works in the background so that you can continue working, and can be scheduled to run at regular intervals. Take a look at their web site at: http://www.diskeeper.com/. You can download a free trial copy and give it a whirl.

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