How Important is it to Defrag my Computer's Hard Drive

Introduction:

It comes with our mind on "How Important is it to Defrag our computer's had drive?"
If you have never defragged your computer then most likely your system is running slow or even freezing up. Everyone wants to know how to make their computers run longer and fast and that is the main reason we have this article to let you to know that just because you are experiencing computer problems, it does not necessarily mean that you have to run out and purchase a whole new system.

Most people never take the time to learn that they system needs certain maintenance and instead when it freezes up, they become upset at it. However this is just a sign that your system requires maintenance to get back in working order.

You can easily run a free PC scan on it on several sites including third party software's that will help us to find out if your system is performing at its best.

So you may be wondering why is it so important to defrag my computer? Well the hard drive in our computer is composed of several disks or platters. When data gets written on the hard drive, it is written in a continuous fashion. As you continue to delete and add files bits and pieces are left on your hard drive. They remain on it until you run a defrag on your system.

Now you may be thinking well I do not know anything about computer defragmentation. Well you know more than most people about this now. Most people do not take the time to take care of their computers that way that they should be taken care of; and therefore they do not last long enough.

This is always what you want to do before you run out and purchase a new system because the one that you are working with is old. You should easily be able to get around 4-5 years with a PC. Of course it also depends on what type of system that it is.

I highly recommend that before we defrag our system we need to back up all your important files to make sure that you do not lose anything in the process. I personally did not back up my files and did not lose anything that I did not want to but it is better safe that sorry.

Computer fragmentation is very helpful especially in maximizing the disk resources that we have in our computer.
How to Defrag Your Computer?
Defragmenting your Windows XP hard drive
1. To defragment your hard drive in Windows XP, open My Computer and right-click on the C: drive. Select Properties, then click on the Tools tab and select Defragment Now...

2. The Windows Disk Defragmenter program will open and all drives are listed in the top window pane. Since the program is going to be arranging files on your hard drive, it is important that no files are being accessed during the process, or the program won't be able to move them. Close all open programs.

3. The C: drive is where operating system files and programs are installed by default, so make sure that it is selected, then click Defragment. While the program is running, it is recommend that you not use your computer. The time is takes to run the defragmenting process is dependent on the size of your hard drive and amount of fragmentation.
While the program is running you will see a graphical representation of the blocks of files on your hard drive being moved and the fragmented segments joined together. Usually the less gaps of free space between the contiguous segments the better, but as long as the fragmented files are put together into contiguous segments, it will help your computer's performance.

4. Once the process is complete, the graphic should display most of the contiguous files on the left and the majority of the free space on the right. Close the Disk Defragmenter window and resume using your computer.