Is Your Computer Hard Drive Falling Apart?

Scary titles grab your attention, and since you're reading this sentence, the above title did its job. Now my job is to explain what I mean and what you can do about it.

What's a "hard drive" anyway? Is there such a thing as a soft drive? No, but there is such a thing as a floppy drive that reads and writes to floppy disks. You may or may not have a floppy drive on your computer, and it's also known as a 3.5-inch drive with a slot that size at the front of your PC (personal computer). You might think, "I have some of those 3.5-inch disks (or diskettes), and they are hard; they aren't floppy." True, but inside that hard outer case is a very floppy disk that is the actual recording material.

In contrast, your hard drive is a machine inside your computer that does have hard disks permanently installed in it. This is the primary means of storing valuable information, because it is retained even when the computer is turned off. Your computer's memory, on the other hand, is comprised of electronic chips that forget everything when the power is removed.

Hard drives are generally very durable devices that work for thousands of hours without breaking down. So what's with the title to this article? No, you don't have to worry about your computer's hard drive falling to pieces inside your PC. The "falling apart" refers to the files (programs and documents) that are stored on the drive, and this is something that happens to everyone.

When you save something to your hard drive by installing a program, downloading something from the Web, or saving a document you have just written, that new file may be saved all in one location on your drive. However, your computer may scatter pieces of the file hither and yon in order to use the space that's available. The more often you save and delete files from your computer, the more scattered your files become. This is called fragmentation and is the real subject of this article.

Fragmentation can be bad in two ways. First, it slows down the transferring of files to and from your drive as the drive's recording heads travel across the surface of the disks. Second, having your files stored in many pieces increases the likelihood of their being damaged. Fortunately (or there wouldn't have been any point to this article), you can do something about fragmentation.

Go to Start / Programs / Accessories / System Tools / Disk Defragmenter. Click Analyze, and the program will determine how serious fragmentation is on your hard drive. This diagnosis can take a long time, depending on a number of factors. When it is complete, a little window will pop up to tell you if you need to defragment your drive. If it says you should, then just click Defragment, and the process will start. This will take even longer than diagnosis, and you should start it when you will not be needing your computer for a good while. Just before you go to bed is a good choice.

How often should you run Disk Defragmenter? There is no one answer for this. If you use your computer heavily with lots of file saving and deleting, you may need to run it monthly. It's more likely to be something you can ignore until you notice a slowing down in the response of your computer. Other things can also be responsible for a poky PC, and we'll deal with those in future articles.