Self Computer Maintenance: Part 3 Using the Defragmentation Tools

Greeting to all, to continue on this series another way of accessing the scan disk tool is by pointing your mouse on the my computer picture or icon then double click to access the item of the icon, then select the hard disk drive you want to be fixed. After selecting the hard disk point the mouse on the disk and press the mouse right button or just press the right click button. From here a menu will appear from that menu select the properties tab at the bottom of the menu and the dialog box for the my computer icon will appear. Then select the TOOLS tab which contain the Scan-disk, Defragmentation and Back-up tools. Then select Scan-disk and press start. Again if it needs to be scheduled then just followed the instruction on the screen.

Now after finishing the repair and diagnostic of the scan-disk, your hard disk is now ready for the defragmentation tools. Now you may ask, what the heck is that tool and what does it do. First of all your hard disk files tend to be fragmented from all those usage day in and day out. You sometimes notice that the response time of your computer has become increasing slow this past days, weeks and months. And your wondering what is going on with this computer, it seems fine, it boot-up well there was no error or problems encounter in its operations. But when i try to access my files they seems a bit slow and yes it boot up well but its a little bit slower compare last week or last months.

So what is going on inside there. Remember your hard needs to spin in order to work and to access data, during that operation sometime your file tend tend to be separated from its component. What????, well actually your file is compose of several parts which i not go into to detail because it will become to technical and will defeat the purpose of this blog. Just know that a file store on the hard disk has many parts okay, and this part seems to be separated from the whole because when where using our computer, some other files is also being used. And there are plenty of them. The job of the defragmentation tool is to correct this error so that you can access your files much faster or same as before. Its put the file most used in the hard disk location where is can be accessed easily and can be loaded mush faster, the other files that is not being used much is put on the farthest part, well something like that. The fragmentation of the hard disk as a whole and your files as well is also fix.

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Well anyhow before is actually begins the fixing of the problem, it first analysis your computer hard disk drive to see how large is the fragmentation. After doing this it will display a report about this in percent like telling you that your hard drive is 50% fragmented and its recommendation of proceeding with the used of the tool to correct this error. Oh i need to mentioned that when your going to this, you cannot used your computer while deffragging is going on. So this one need to be scheduled as well. Now how long will it take to do this stuff. Primarily it defends on your hard disk size and how much files is there to check. If you have a very large amount of files to check.

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You can do this before you go home, set-it up and start the tools, of course leave it alone once it has begun to work. Just turn off the monitor of you computer and let it be. Another thing If this is your scheduled you report this to you Tech Support Staff so that they will now what your doing and can monitor your machine first thing in the morning. If  your going to do this on your home computer then scheduled it before you go to sleep. Just do as mentioned above and check it the next day to see if its done. I hope i was able to help you in this little way on how to used this tool which is available to you. You don't need buy other tool and software for maintenance purposes. This two will suffice. But again for a more serious problem you need to consult a qualified technician to help you out on your computer problem.

Self Computer Maintenance Part 2: Using the SCANDISK and DISK DEFRAGMENATION software

To continue on this series, if you already has a UPS and its up and running, congratulation. The next set of tools is also very important as its take care of a specific hardware device on your computer the all important Hard Disk Drive. Yup this two software is often ignore because they take time to implement. But sometimes we need to pause for a moment to know what is going on and know the status of our computer, especially the hard disk drive.

The two software I'm mentioning is the scan-disk and the defragmentation tool for windows user. Both software are completely free. Its already inside windows you just need to access and used to see its benefit. Now why do we need this to software tool? Well this tool is used to simple make the files in your hard disk drive much easier to access. Also they check to integrity of each files and repair them and also your hard disk. Its test every sector of your hard disk to see is they are damage. If it is found to be damage the file occupying that sector or place in your hard disk is moved to another location complete with notice to all the software that is associated with it. Its just like your moving to another place and you want people to know that you are moving and have moved already. You inform all important people about the moving away activity. It is important to inform all that is involved in the process so that no-one will be lost when they try to communicate with you. You do not want to lost a file when maintaining your computer specially the important ones.

The first tool to be applied should be the SCAN-DISK. The hard drive should be check first for storage error and data error or file error. But first where it is located on the computer. Well follow this step, first click the START button then point to the ALL Programs and then to the ACCESSORIES and the final sub-menu is the SYSTEM TOOL where you will find both of this tool. Click on the Scan disk menu name and a dialog box will appear select the TOOL TAB and press CHECK NOW to used the Scan-disk tool. Okay this is getting to technical, i have provided a picture on the next step. From the picture above just check the to boxes and press start to begin the disk checking. However for some reason the scan-disk replied to you like " DISK CHECK NEEDS TO SCHEDULED, WOULD YOU LIKE TO SCHEDULED ON THE NEST RESTART?". There is an option there for a YES or NO answer from your. You must press the YES button the start the scan-disk on you next restart. It will automatically activate itself after restarting the computer because you have scheduled it. If the scan-disk finds some error in your files and or hard disk it will automatically fix these things. Also there 5 stage during the scan-disk diagnostic, you must allow all stages to be finish in order for the diagnostic to be completed.

That's it for the scan-disk. How the Disk Defragmentaion tool, can i use it before using the scan-disk. Well sometimes it work you can used it without suing scan-disk first. But most of the time if try to used it. It will suggest that check your disk first by using scan-disk before using this tool. This is getting too long Part two on the Disk Defragmentaion on my next post.