Computer Help Needed

I could be wrong but i think it is how your computer organizes everything. have you ever defragged before if not how long have you had your computer. i could be wrong but this is what i think it is

i have neverdefragged my computer but iam looking for some software to improve performance of my hard drive and somehting to spped upmy programs and one of the descriptions on most of the software says, 'a good de-fragger' or somin like that so i don;t know what i am gettin into, but if anyone has any good performance enhancers on their computers or nay ways to make my computer go faster, lemme know okay? thanks








P/R/O/G/R/E/S/S/I/O/N/:/O/B/S/E/S/S/I/O/N/

sorry man, i'm not much help here but i'd defrag it then your computer should speed up because it will be in order. good luck

thanks yo, anhone else have any advice????








P/R/O/G/R/E/S/S/I/O/N/:/O/B/S/E/S/S/I/O/N/

when stuff is saved on your hard drive, its not in any specific order. half of what you save could be in one place, the other half could be in another place, another cylinder or a different side. So whenever you run or open a file, you drive has to look in multiple locations for the info it needs. Defragging organises the data so that all related data is together. This noticably speeds up your computer and hard drive performance. You should defrag your drive once a month or AT LEAST once every 3 months. If you never have, do it now! it will speed your system up. It isnt dangerous and will not harm data at all. It does take some patience (it takes a hell of a long time). Make sure that you dont use your computer while defragging, it just restarts the defragger and makes things take longer.

hope this helps

Mauii

yeah, what he said. You need do de FAG your computer and get rid of all those Gays, that might be hiding in there,
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I am about an 8, i will sit next to a girl that is a 6 and drink till she is a 10 and then bring her home

Mauii has it sort of right, and basically the right idea. But your computer always saves one file in the same place. It doesn't start off in random places, It usually saves it as close as possible together. But when you delete something it will eventually (not right away, it just gets deleted out of the file allocation table, and is actually still on your harddrive, this is how the FBI and shit can find out what's been on your computer) disappear from the harddrive, but there will be a 'hole' where that file used to be, and if that hole is too small for another file to be saved there, it'll be saved somehwere else. Eventually you have all these holes, and it takes longer to retreive information, so yes, defragging reorganizes all the data to get rid of the holes.

You're both almost right...

When you delete a file, and it creates a hole, the hole isn't just left there. It could be filled with part of a file. Here's an example.

You have three files named A, B, and C, and they're organized on your disk like this:
AAAABBBCCCC

You then delete B so you have this:
AAAA   CCCC

But then you created D, which is 5 clusters in size, and you end up with this:
AAAADDDCCCCDD

Then you edit C and make it larger, so you end up with this:
AAAADDDCCCCDDCCC

So now when you want to open D, you have to skip across C. After months of saving, deleting, creating, changing, deleting, saving, etc, you end up with one fragmented disk!

Defragmenting your disk doesn't increase speed as much as is thought. Fragmentation only affects files that are not accessed using the index method. So the most used files on your disk (virtual memory for example) are not affected because it doesn't read the file sequentially, but randomly (like your ram.. random access memory, only it's a file). If you edit a lot of video, or deal with very large files that you created, then you should definitelly defrag.

BUT, be warned, defragging involves taking data off your disk, putting it into memory, then writing it back to the disk. So there is definitelly the chance of losing data. Let's say the defrag has just moved a file into memory, then your power goes out. That data is most likely gone forever. So be sure to do a backup of important files before you defragment!

Matt