Speeding Up

How do you know it’s time to tune up your hard disk drive? You’ll know when it’s time - your computer will slow down, it won’t be able to keep up with your disc drive and you’ll probably be crying yourself to sleep every night….

Hope is not lost however, there are things you can do to bring your hard drive back to its former glory…you don’t have to cry anymore;

Windows

Step 1 - Firstly close any open applications. When I say open, I mean open - this means antivirus software, screen savers and any other thing running on the computer. Check everything has been quit by pressing CTRL + ALT + Delete and make sure there is nothing in the list.

Step 2 - If there is anything in the list then make sure everything is highlighted and then press End Task to make sure each software is closed completely.

Step 3 - Then you need to open My Computer by double-clicking on the My Computer icon.

Step 4 - Then choose which hard drive you want to defragment. If you only have one attached then your choice will be simple and if you have a number of hard drives attached then pick the one that you use to boot the computer from to start with.

Step 5 - Once you have selected the drive that you want to defrag, right click on the drive and select the Properties selection from the drop down menu. This will bring up the Properties menu for the selected drive.

Step 6 - Once you have the Properties window opened then select the Tools tab and you will be taken to the Tools section of the Hard Drive.

Step 7 - Once in the Tools section of the Properties window for the drive you want to defrag simply click on the button labelled Defragment Now and go and make yourself a cup of tea because it can take a while! Once done you should notice that your hard drive will be more responsive and healthier.

Mac OS X

Unlike with Windows, we can’t supply a step by step guide because the guys over at Apple decided not to supply their computers with a defragment option on their systems for their hard drives.

However, we can advise you to go out and search for a third party application that will do the job just as well as if it were built in - search Google for the right application and you’ll find it most probably for free.

Once downloaded open it up and follow its instructions and once again go and make yourself a cup of tea.

On Macs there is the opportunity to do a partial defrag by first copying as many files as possible to the backup disk, excluding the System Folder. Then delete the original files once they have been safely copied and then copy back the files - only attempt to do this if you are sure all your files are backed up!!!