Stump the PC Club is a free tech-advice column written by members of the North Orange County Computer Club, which has been in existence since 1976. Visit the club’s site at noccc.org. And don’t forget to stop by the Gadgetress’ home for the PC Club, at ocregister.com/link/pcclub, to find out how to ask a question and read past answers.
QUESTION: My operating system is XP and my computer is a desktop with a 114 gigabyte hard drive. How often should I defrag and how do I go about doing it? Typical answer is when computer slows down but I’m not sure I can recognize this. Also, I leave my computer on continuously — is this good or bad?
PC CLUB: Hard drive maintenance is an important part of keeping your PC running smoothly and operating at peak performance. Defragging is one of the three major components involved. This maintenance is not the only factor but the one we’ll address here. Other factors include controlling the programs that run when you start up your PC and the prevention of viruses and spyware from invading your system.
These three major components of disk maintenance include periodic Disk Cleanup Disk Error checking, formally called Check Disk; and Defragging. Disk Cleanup was discussed previously in Stump the PC Club’s article “How to cleanup your hard drive” available at http://bit.ly/UWYlY. Read the rest of this entry »
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