Computer Disease Disk Fragmentation

Posted by B. Smith on Thursday, October 18, 2007 - 12:29 am:

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Aptly named a disease, fragmentation, when left untreated, can not only spread throughout your computer and slow down its performance but could potentially lead to the crash of your hard drive itself.

While most people opt to treat a disease when they discover its presence, for some reason fragmentation doesn’t elicit the same response, yet it most certainly should. For many people, their computers hold extremely valuable pieces of information and files. Things that, if lost would be impossible to replace.

Like any disease there are warning signs that computer users should look for when diagnosing fragmentation. Most of these signs relate to your computer’s speed in relation to how quickly it responds to entered commands.

For computer users experiencing slow boot-up times, delays in loading applications, or reduced speed in file retrieval there is a good chance that their hard drive contains fragmented files. At first this may seem like a minor inconvenience but if we ignore the problem it could develop into something much greater.

To understand fragmentation you just have to have a minor understanding of how your computer saves files. When you save a file your computer places it inside a block. The next file you save will follow the previously saved file and this process continues with each additional file saved. Problems occur when you open a saved file, make additions, and then re-save that file. Because the original file occupied a smaller amount of space inside the block the newly modified file will not fit as a complete unit inside that space. Your hard drive is forced to cut the file and store the excess data in another space, creating a fragmented file.

When you attempt to retrieve that modified file at a later time your hard drive is forced to find the pieces that comprise the entire file and thus the delays. Now think of that in the thousands of files and you have an idea of what could happen if you allow fragmentation to continue.

Fortunately there is an easy answer to the problem of fragmentation. By running defragmentation software you can clean your hard drive of fragmented files. Essentially, defrag works by piecing together these fragmented files and storing them in larger blocks of space that can handle modifications and still save a file as one unit.

Installing defrag software will instantly improve the speed by which your computer operates and eliminate the lengthy delays experienced when we carry out such basic tasks as booting up our computer, opening files, checking email, and browsing the internet.

The great thing about defrag software is that it is a one-time act and does not require constant maintenance or renewal fees for the computer user. It’s as easy as going into your local computer retail store, picking up the software, and installing it on your computer.