How to Fix a Slow Hard Drive
Of all of the components that make up your
computer, the hard disk drive is the one
most important single component that
requires the most attention and maintenance.
It is in constant use and is responsible for all
communication with the CPU, saving data, storing
data and retrieving data like a mad thing
possessed and, if it is not maintained
properly it will rebel big style and you'll you'll end
up with a very slow computer due entirely to
a slow hard drive.
There are magnetic platters inside the hard drive
and these are in an almost continous spinning
motion. The heads inside the hard drive which are
responsible for both reading and writing data to the
disk flutter at a mind boggling speed across the platter
surface.
Over time, the hard disk is subjected to a number of CPU
processes that modify and add all sorts of data that is
stored on the drive and this data gets amazingly
fragmented.
So What Does This Mean in Plain
English?
Imagine that your hard drive is like one big filing
cabinet. All of the files are neatly arranged in there
relevent folders and the files you need to use most of
the time are conveniently all placed in the top
drawer where they are easiest to get at.
If you then need to retrieve a file (or even a
number of files for that matter) they are all nicely
grouped together in the same folder so it takes only a
second or two to find exactly what you are looking
for. That is in effect how a clean defragmented hard drive
should be.
Now imagine that every time you needed to put these
files away again you were not allowed
to put them back where you originally found
them, but you just opened draws and stuffed the
files anywhere you could find a gap. The next
time you needed the same files you would have to play find
a needle in the haystack and open all the drawers and
folders to find them so rather than getting them all from
the same place.
Now if you multiply the above by the
number of times you access your hard drive in a day (let
alone the length of time it has been since you purchased
your computer) and you'll quickly understand how a
fragmented hard drive becomes a very slow hard drive
and can easily bring even the fastest computer to
a grinding halt.
Defragmenting a Hard Drive
Fortunately having thrown all
of your data onto your hard drive in a
random manner you are then able to tidy it up
again with some easy to use system tools commonly
known as hard disk defragmentation
utilities.
Windows operating system comes with its own defragmenter
but this is only a cut down version of a proper
defragmentation utility and is a one hit almost barbaric
affair. The plus point is that it is free
but depending on the size of your hard drive and its
condition defragmentation can take many hours and you may
only see a marginal improvement in your computers
speed.
Most Pc enthusiasts and specialist that understand how
their computers work favour performance utilities such as
Diskeeper as this can help avoid the need for harddrive replacement.
DiskeeperĀ® 2007 Home Edition
Overview

Warning: Using Diskeeper will make Your
Computer Run Faster.
With
Diskeeper 2007 Home installed on your computer,
your system will run noticeably quicker
and everything you do from running programs to
gaming, surfing the Internet and downloading will
occur at a much faster rate and more
efficiently.
Long
waits, sluggishness, freeze-ups and crashes will be a
thing of the past.
If you
think back to how your computer ran when it was new,
that will give you a good idea of how a performance
utility like diskeeper can help rejuvenate your computer
and make it run better than it has for a long
time.?
Diskeeper can be set to run in the background
if you wish so it defragments your files while your
system is idle or if your screensaver is on for
example.This help free up your system resources for
other operations.
Using
diskeeper can also help prolong the life of your hard
drive as the read heads to not have to scoot about all
over the place just to pick up one complete piece of
data.
For a full overview of
Diskeeper and how to fix a slow hard drive watch this
video or you can Download a
Free Trial.
Solid State
Drives
Another alternative technology
that is coming to the fore for storing data is of course
Solid State Drives or
SSD's as they are known
for short. These do not work in the traditional way so
don't suffer from fragmentation problems, but there are
other important considerations that need to be taken into
account with these device's.
How to Fix a Slow Hard
Drive
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