Defragment Your Drawers

If I had a chest-of-drawers, I would have my socks and underwear in the top drawer.  The next would have my tee shirts.  The third drawer would have my shorts and the rest of my tee shirts.  The fifth drawer would have my tie, suspenders, an old bottle of Old Spice, some shoe strings and my shoe polish.  The bottom drawer would have my red Santa hat, pink leotards and the foot fungus spray.

If my chest is neat and organized, things are easy to find.  All I need to do is remember which drawer has what in it.

Over time, the drawers may get cluttered.  things may get put in the wrong place.  Before long, I might have to look under the Santa Hat to find the shoe strings.  I don’t even know who owns the pink leotards, but they end up in the top drawer.

Your computer is just the same.  Think of your hard drive as a chest-of-drawers.  In it are drawers (folders) with socks (files), underwear (graphics), tee shirts (documents) and pink leotards ( programs you don’t even know what they do).  After a while, things get cluttered, free space gets used by stray files and pink leotards think they can take the rest of the free space.

Without you being aware, your computer is working harder and harder to find what it needs.  All the data is still there but it’s all over the place.

If you are a user of Windows, they have a simple fix for straightening up your hard drive and putting everything in it’s proper place.  It is called the Disk Defragmenter.

First, go to the start menu, click on All Programs, then Accessories, then System Tools and click on Disk Defragmenter.

Now you simply click the button "Defragment" and it does all the rest.  Depending on the size of your chest-of-drawers… I mean your hard drive, it may take only a few minutes or up to an hour to complete the defragmenting process.