Before running a defragmentation, it is important to shut down all other running applications as they may write to the hard drive and impair defragmentation performance.
Defragmentation of your hard drive is an essential tool to keep your system running smoothly and effeciently. Through out your surfing the internet and jumping from web page to web page, your hard drive disk will develope "skips" in it. This is what is refered to as "free space". Defragmentation will elimenate these skips that are scattered throughout the hard drive. An excessive amount of freespace will cause your system to run slower and bog down when attempting to open multiple pages.
From the START button, go to All Programs, select ACCESSORIES. Another window will open.
Select SYSTEM TOOLS, then another small window will open and you will need to scroll down till you see Disk Defragmetation.
Click on that and you will see a screen simular to this one. If you only have one drive, then your window will only show one drive to be defragmented.
Once you have the defragmentation screen open, select Analyze. when your computer has finished analyzing the disk, it will advise you whether you should defragment your system or not. It will also tell you how much free space you have on your disk. Anything above 85% is optimal and defragmentation is not necessary. You should defrag your system at least once a week or when your system is below 85% of free space.
After analyzing your disk, your computer will show you a circle with two shades. One will be of free space and the percentage and the other of used space and the percentage.
While defraging, your system can or will show you a graph, pie, or another model of your system as it defrags the disk.
When defragmentation is complete, you will have an option to view the file or close the window. When you are finished, you will need to reboot your system for the defragmentation to take effect. You should notice a cleaner and faster start and faster opening pages if your system had a lot of free space on the disk.
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