Hard Disk Drive Maintenance Tips | HDD

Maintain Hard Disk Drives in Top Condition

You must have often seen your new computer beginning to crawl from those blistering speeds that you were once proud of. Well the good news is you can get those speeds back with some simple maintenance tips and tricks.

There are some simple maintenance tools available with every operating system(OS).

Disk Cleanup
Each time you install applications or simply work and surf the Internet it creates temporary files on the disk. Once you exit your work these files are no longer needed. Over time this burgeoning data fills up your hard disk drive and causes fragmentation of data. This is the main cause that puts chains on your nimble footed beauty. You have to just run this utility to restore its pride. Here is how- Go to Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Cleanup. On the dialog box that pops up select drive C to be cleaned (the OS drive).
ScanDisk
This utility determines any errors on your hard disk drive and repairs the same. Unscanned disks can have bad sectors and any data written on these can result in data loss. To scan any drive - Go to Windows Explorer, right click and select Properties. Click Tools[/] tab and under [i]Error Checking, click "Check Now". Bad sectors if any will be repaired or marked up. No data will be written onto these bad sectors henceforth.
Disk Defragmentation
Fragmentation results when data on disk is dispersed on the hard disk due to prolonged read and write operations as also while installation of large applications. With passage of time the free space on the hard disk drive does not appear in a chunk, but in smaller chunks and when you install applications data is written in available free space. You can well imagine what happens when the disk head has to scurry from one location to another to launch applications. Disk Defragmentation organises and moves around data files together so that read and write operations happen faster. Here is how to start the defragmentor - Go to Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Defragmentor. Running this utility once a month is recommended. However do not overuse this utility.

These maintenance tips should keep your hard disk drives in top notch condition.

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Submitted by kukku on Fri, 2008-03-07 00:26

good information

Submitted by orange on Sun, 2008-03-09 23:45.

i liked the information

Great Information

Submitted by bluemoon on Mon, 2008-03-10 11:59.

Thank you for the great information.

Thanks for the info. I always wondered how it worked.

Submitted by LuvToSurf on Mon, 2008-03-10 12:09.

That was a very clear explanation on why our computer tends to run a lot slower at times and the reason we don't have the disk space we thought we had. I bookmarked your page and will refer to it when I operate my pc. I use my mac frequently and I don't seem to have those problems with my powerbook G4. But, I love both my pc (desktop) and my mac (laptop).

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Hard disk maintenance

Submitted by Idlewild on Mon, 2008-03-10 12:29.

"There are some simple maintenance tools available with every operating system(OS).'

True, but the instructions in the article apply only to Windows-based PCs. Any Linux or Mac user trying to find the "Start" menu will never find it!

Yes. That is correct. I use Final Cut Pro editing software...

Submitted by LuvToSurf on Mon, 2008-03-10 14:32.

Yes, of course... I'm a videographer/editor and I use FCP editing software, exclusively. All my video clips are in QuickTime format. But, other software I use for the internet are not compatible with the mac, i.e. not cross-platform.

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Thanks for appreciating...

Submitted by kukku on Wed, 2008-03-12 03:41.

Thanks for all those who appreciated and found the utilities useful for maintaining your PC Hard Disk Drives .

Yes, you are right Idlewind, Mac is a diffferent OS and does not have the Start button like in the Windows OS. Bur similar utilities exists for Mac OS too.

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Good advice.

Submitted by luckyme on Fri, 2008-03-21 14:50.

Very important information. I used to keep wondering about my PC speeds. Used Defrag utility and saw a lot of positive change. PC runs much faster now.

kukku, thanks.

Looking for more tips on speeding up computer.