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August 11, 2006
Fragmentation Facts
Dear Larry,
I was recently told that I could possibly speed up my
computer by defragmenting the hard drive. Does this make any sense to you, and,
if so, what does it mean?
D. S.
Dear D. S.,
What is this mysterious thing called fragmentation and is it
really something that slows computers down?
Let’s think about this simplistically. Imagine that your
computer’s hard drive is organized into little blocks of individual space. Now
say you save Document A to your computer’s hard drive, and your computer stores
it in the consecutive blocks 1 through 3 on the hard drive. Next, you save a
second document, call it Document B, that ends up occupying blocks 4 and 5.
Lastly, you modify Document A and make it longer by a factor of two. Since the
original Document A occupied blocks 1-3, and blocks 4 and 5 are occupied by
Document B, your computer must store the new material from Document A in the
next set of available blocks, 6-8. Suddenly, unbeknownst to you, Document A has
become fragmented. Part of it is stored in one location of the hard drive, and a
second part of it is stored elsewhere.
Don’t worry, your computer handles this with aplomb and is
easily able to reconstruct the document when you next open it. But multiply this
example a couple hundred or thousand times, and you can see that individual
files on your computer may become broken up into lots of individual segments
spread across the hard drive. Theoretically, this can eventually become a
problem because it takes time for your computer’s hard drive to seek out all the
individual pieces of a file and put them back together again when the file is
called for.
Defragmentation is a process you can run on your computer that
reorganizes all the files so that they are not broken up and they occupy
consecutive blocks of hard drive space. Of course, use your computer a little
more after that, and the problem will eventually return with a vengeance.
So is all this fragmentation a problem that keeps your
computer running slowly? The truth is, not likely—not if your computer was built
within the past two or three years. With the advent of significantly faster hard
drives and an improved filing system built within Windows, the problem has been
significantly reduced. If you’re operating on an older computer, defragmenting
your hard drive may help a little. But on newer computers, you’ll barely notice
any improvement at all. (You can find the defragmentation program under Start,
All Programs, Accessories, System Tools.)
Well, if defragmentation isn’t slowing your computer down,
what is? It could be any number of things:
1. Your computer may need more memory (not hard drive space)
to operate efficiently. (Memory is like empty space on the top of your desk. If
your desk is covered with papers and you want to work on something new, you may
need a bigger desk. That’s because shuffling papers to and from your filing
cabinet to make more room takes time and slows you—and your computer—down.)
2. You may be running software (like an anti-virus program)
that wasn’t intended to work well on a PC as old as the one you own. (I like to
use the analogy of adding air conditioning to a Ford Pinto. You may be cooler,
but try driving up hill at the same time.)
3. Your PC may be running slowly because of spyware or a
virus.
4. Your computer may be trying to do too much simultaneously.
Many programs run constantly on your PC and all of them require memory and some
processing power to work. Too many of them trying to run at the same time will
noticeably slow down your computer.
Other issues may be at work as well. The bottom line is, you
may need to have me or someone like me examine your computer and see what
exactly is wrong.
This is Larry Schneider, logging off.
