My hard drive was yelling bloody murder because I hadn't defragged in months. Once I did it, my PC's performance increased. That's because even a fast, 10,000RPM drive spends an inordinate amount more time looking for files it needs rather than accessing them.
You need to defrag, too. To get started read my just-posted Hassle-Free PC column here.
As usual, though, I had a few more things to say in the column and ran out of space. And with a handful of early readers sending e-mail, I also need to clarify a couple of the tips.
Defragging Tips
Besides the tricks I mentioned in the column, you might also delete all but the most current Restore Points. Logon as Administrator, from Start, click All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, and choose Disk Cleanup. Click the Options tab and select Cleanup in the System Restore dialog box.
Deleting Zone Alarm's Big Files
I suggested using a batch file, an ancient programming language used by equally ancient old-timers. If you plan to download the Zipped file I mentioned in the column, make sure to first copy the fie named " tvDebug.1" into the \Windows\Internet Logs folder.
Look at Those Duplicates
Getting rid of duplicate files can be a tricky business, even with Duplicate File Finder, the free program I mentioned in my column.
My strategy is simple: I take the time to examine the folders where each set of duplicates reside. If one of the two files is located in the Windows folder, I leave it alone. Instead, I'm looking for more important hard drive wasters, such as duplicate videos or image files.
Looking Over Your Hard Drive
I like Windirstat, the free utility I picked as the Hassle-Free PC Tool of the Month.
But there are alternatives. SequoiaView uses a visualization technique called cushion treemaps to provide you with a single picture of the entire contents of your hard drive. You can use it to locate those large files that you haven't accessed in one year, or to quickly locate the largest picture files on your drive.
All good points, including a few new ones I hadn't seen before, thanks.
One point you didn't make, all the cleanup of temp files, duplicates, hibernation file, should be done before you do the defrag.
http://www.ccleaner.com/ - Ccleaner is a good freeware util I've used for a while
Another tip: The swap file does not have to be variable sized. In old days when a big drive was 80mb (not gb, I still have one sitting in the room next door) drive space was precious. So MS made the Windows swap file resizeable. Now with gigabytes of space you don't have to do that anymore. Typical guidelines suggest making swap file 1-2x size of RAM. Letting it constantly resize generates lots of swap file fragments and holes that fragment other files.
To do that in XP SP2:
Control Panel / System Properties / Advanced / Performance Settings / Advanced / Virtual Memory Change / set max and min size the same
Hi Steve, I have a question, About the duplicate files. Is there any quick way to delete them? I have 7,822 dupes. Surely theres a way to do it without doing it one at a time. This will take months!
Defragging and all its woes is a very over rated, time consuming useless, drive destroying waste of time. It relies on very warped testing issues. I challange that the 4 to 5 hours for a 320 MB drive is a unrealistic move. There are real time defrag programs that seem to work and there are programs that catch the write and make sure it writes in a contiguous file
"There are real time defrag programs that seem to work and there are programs that catch the write and make sure it writes in a contiguous file."
And what might those programs be, pray tell, notsocrazy? Every so often, when I'm reminded about defragging, I'll analyze my drives with my Windows XP defragger, and if it tells me I should defrag, I'll do it. Did it just the other day. It doesn't take all that long, and my computer runs a lot faster afterwards.
LINDA A.