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Defragment Your Hard Drive

How to use the Disk Defragmenter Tool

© Michael Simpson

When you hard drive gets defragmented, what do you do? Just follow these steps.

How to run Disk Defragmenter in Windows XP

When you open a file your computer pulls the information into RAM, then works with it there. When you close the program Windows will write the file back to the hard drive. Sometimes it is unable to write the file entirely back where it was found, in fact sometimes it puts part of the file on one side of the disk, and another part on the other side of the disk. When files aren't stored congiguosly we call them fragmented. The easiest way to fix this is to run Disk Defragmenter.

NOTE: Running Defragmenter will take a while, possibly an hour or more. You can do nothing while the Defragmenter is working.

Go to Start | All Progrmas | Accessories | System Tools | Disk Defragmenter. At the bottom of the window that comes up there are 5 buttons. From left to right they are:

  • Analyze
  • Defragment
  • Pause
  • Stop
  • View Report

At this point we need to decide if your hard drive needs to be defragmented. So highlight the drive you want to check and choose Analyze. After a short time (probably only a few seconds) you will get a report letting you know if you need to defragment. If the report says "You should defragment this volume" then click the button on the bottom of the report that says "Defragment".

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The copyright of the article Defragment Your Hard Drive in PC Software/OS is owned by Michael Simpson. Permission to republish Defragment Your Hard Drive in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.





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