Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft Windows XP in 24 Hours

Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft Windows XP in 24 Hours

By Greg Perry

Fill In the Holes

Disk Defragmenter fills empty gaps on your disks. As you add and delete files, the deleted space leaves free holes around the disk. Over time, your disk response time will slow down as you add or delete document files to and from the disk drive.

Pick Up the Pieces

Windows XP can store large files on a fragmented disk as long as there is enough free fragmented space to hold the file. Windows stores the files in linked chunks across the disk drive, filling in fragments and linking them.

A large file is stored as one continuous file if enough space exists to do so. But often, Windows tries to reuse fragment space left over from a deleted file. Over time, the number of these file fragments can grow considerably and slow down your PC when you access a file that's fragmented.

Disk access slows down on a fragmented disk drive because Windows must jump to each file fragment when retrieving a file. If you run Disk Defragmenter often enough (once or twice a month for the average user ought to be enough), Windows keeps the fragments to a minimum and, thus, increases the disk access speed.

The following To Do item walks you through an example that demonstrates how to defragment a disk drive. As you'll learn in this task, Disk Defragmenter not only closes empty disk gaps but also rearranges your disk drive so that often-used programs run more quickly.

To Do: Correcting Disk Fragmentation

  1. Display the Start menu and select All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Disk Defragmenter. Windows displays an opening window, like the one shown in Figure 19.1, which displays size and usage numbers about your computer's hard disks.
  2. Select a disk drive to analyze.
  3. Click the Analyze button. Disk Defragmenter checks the disk drive to see if fragmentation is a problem. Disk Defragmenter displays a message window such as the one in Figure 19.2, which suggests whether or not you need to defragment the drive.
  4. Click the View Report button to see details about the disk drive. The report will show how much fragmentation has occurred as a percentage of your disk drive. Just because Defragmenter doesn't recommend that you defragment does not mean that you cannot or should not. If you regularly defragment, your computer will never get to the point of needing the defragmentation, and your hard disk will remain at its optimum performance.
    19fig01.gif

    Figure 19.1 Disk Defragmenter shows details of all your system's disk drives.

    19fig02.gif

    Figure 19.2 Disk Defragmenter recommends that this drive not be defragmented.

  5. To start the defragmentation, click the Defragment button. Disk Defragmenter will begin consolidating the free space on your disk and defragment the drive. Disk Defragmenter shows a graphical display of the process, color-coding fragmented pieces of your drive, during the process.

Caution

Although you know that you should shut down Window XP properly before turning off your computer, nowhere is that advice more important than during a disk defragmentation process. Never turn off your computer while you are defragmenting a drive or you could very well lose information, and possibly destroy so much of the drive's contents that you'll have to reformat the disk drive and recover all its contents from a backup (if you have a backup).

  1. When complete, Disk Defragmenter will tell you that the defragment process is finished. You then can select another disk drive or close the Disk Defragmenter window.

Caution

If you work in another open window while defragmenting your disk drive, Disk Defragmenter might not be able to defragment your disk, and will keep attempting a restart, until you close all other running programs.

Unlike previous versions of Disk Defragmenter, Windows XP's version is lenient about defragmenting on a networked, shared disk drive. You can often defragment a networked disk drive, without turning off the sharing mode of the drive.

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