Defragging Harddrive

Can anyone tell me how to defrag my hardrive and why I would want to do that? What is happening when I defrag my harddrive?Please Help!

 

First, I wish, although this is not my forum, I wish it was like the auto forum(also not my forum) had a suggestion that details be given when posting. If a PC is WIN 95 most advice will not work with WIN 98. Anyway, defrag is the process by which Windows puts errant files back where they belong. When Windows uses files they are often misplaced on the drive in that they are placed in the first open space on the drive. This causes Windows to search longer for theses files than if they were in a logical order. In Win98 go to START,PROGRAMS,ACCESSORIES,SYSTEM TOOLS. There you will find a list of maintaince functions including disk defragmenter. If you have run the maintainance wizard you have been defraged. If not, I would run the maintainance wizard which will defrag, check system for errors and delete unneeded files. This can make a world of difference in the overall operation of your PC......Mike

 

U be the man Mike! Defrag should be ran often! Daily if u wish. Wont hurt maybe help! Scandisk weekly too. Windoze, a never ending source of amazment

 

Bigmike, I detect a new title for you. After reading, learning from and enjoying all of your very accurate posts I welcome you as a forum moderator! Although new to Painting and Wallpaper I have enjoyed the task. The P&W forums somtimes are a lot of work whereas I would view Computers as a hobby for me but we do as and help out as we are asked to do. Again, I look forward to learning from you......Mike

 

Thanx for the help! Sorry I forgot to add the details so here they are, this is a PC workstation at work that is running Win 3.x I assume that the directions for the Win95/98 OS is similar to that of 3.x

 

Hi guys! I'm no computer wiz and I don't know about the workstation part, but I've got windows 3.x on an old machine and the defrag program runs in DOS. Just get to the C prompt, type "defrag" and hit enter. It'll walk you through the process. Hope this helps!

 

What happens is that when you save a file, whether new or an update (rewrite), the system will write the file onto available open space. Parts of the file may end up all over the drive, hence the term fragmented.

Next time you read that file, it will take longer because it has to go to many places on the disk to get all the data.

Its kinda like a tool kit. You add a new hammer to the kit, but there's no room so you store the hammer in the garage and the tool kit in the kitchen. Later you want all the tools for a project in the basement. Wouldn't it be easier (faster) if the hammer was the rest of the tools?

Defrag will put the entire file into one place. It does this for all the files.

 

Win 3.x is a completely different animal than 95/98. I just dug my 3.11 CD out and installed it on an old 486slc33 laptop just to remember how 3.11 works. Long time (3.11 came on an old Creative Blaster CD with dirvers for a Creative 2750 sound card.) Petes right, go to the c:\ prompt type <defrag> and let er rip. Go into the <config> and set for full defrag. Thanks Pete, been a long time since I even thought of 3.11

 

Yea, funny thing is it just came back to me all of a sudden, you know? Sometimes these things just hit you. Thanks should really go to the others on this thread who took the time to explain the process. That would have been the hard part! Thanks guys!

 

One little word of caution I learned from experience. Although you said you're running Win31, this might effect you anyway. If you run the Win95/98 defrag utility, do it from SAFE MODE! Everytime I've tried to run it from Normal mode, it takes twice to thrice as long because it's continually restarting. It has something to do with certain Win drivers insisting on writing to the hard drive even when the system is idle or doing something else.

 

If you are having restart problems, before U run defrag make sure the biggest culprit, Screen Saver/anti virus is shut down or use a blank screen saver. Or, do a <ctrl-alt-del> when window comes up <end task> on running programs. Leave "Explorer" and the "Task Bar" running, pretty much everything else can be shut down. This is the recomended procedure by Microsoft... See article # Q186171 in MS online "searchable" support. Although MS does support shutting down to <safe mode> or using <msconfig> I have never found the need to do so. But if that's what works for you go for it. No matter what it's still Windoze