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Rearrange your data

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Don't be shocked, but your computer can get sloppy. Your computer often breaks files side by side to increase the speed of access and retrieval. However, as files are updated, your computer saves these updates on the largest space available on the hard drive, often found far away from the other adjacent sectors of the file.

The result: a fragmented file. Fragmented files cause slower performance. This is because your computer must now search for all of the file's parts. In other words, your computer knows where all the pieces are, but putting them back together, and in the correct order when you need them, can slow your computer down.

Windows includes a Disk Defragmenter program to piece all your files back together again (if only Humpty-Dumpty had been so lucky) and make them quicker to open.

To run the Disk Defragmenter:

1.       In your Start menu, click My Computer.

2.       In the My Computer dialog box, right-click on the drive you wish to check for errors (for most of us this will be the C: drive, unless you have multiple drives on your computer), and click Properties.

3.       In the Properties dialog box, click the Tools tab, and then in the Defragmentation section, click Defragment Now….

4.       In the Disk Defragmenter dialog box, select the Volume (most likely your Local Disk C:) at the top of the screen, and then click Analyze.

5.       After analyzing your computer, the Disk Defragmenter displays a message stating whether you should defragment your computer. Press Defragment to clean up your computer if necessary. The Disk Defragmenter will reorganize files by placing together and organizing them by program and size, as shown in Figure 5.

Files being reorganizing with the Disk Defragmenter.

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