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by Santaanacanyon on August 1st, 2003

Santaanacanyon

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What goes on when I start up "disc defragment", and how often should I perform this maintenance?

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  • by DOSJockey382 on August 7th, 2003

    DOSJockey382

    When your computer goes to write a file to the hard drive, it looks for the first available blank spot on the disk to write it in. Ideally, the computer writes out the file in one big block of information. However, if that open section of the drive is not large enough to write the whole file, the computer will fill the empty space and go find the next empty space and continue writing the information. The computer will continue this process of looking for open space and filling it in until the entire file has been writtten, all the while keeping track of all the different places it has put these file fragments.

    Disc defragmenting is the process of putting the fragments of each file back together in one coherent block of information. Defragmenting your hard drive speeds up your computer's ability to access an individual file because all the information of a given file is together and not spread out over the hard drive.

    These empty spaces that lead to disc fragmentation are caused by the deleting of files. These files can be anything: data files, program files, or operating system or browser temporary files. A good rule of thumb for defragmenting a hard drive is once every 3 to 6 months. The more heavily you work your computer, the more frequently you should defragment your hard drive. Some computer file systems don't need to be defragmented. Most Windows/DOS files systems need to be defragmented, while Unix/Linux files systems do not.

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