Managing Your Hard Disk
What Exactly is My Hard Disk?
The hard disk of a PC, laptop, notebook or PDA is the place were you store all your work.
When you are working on your files, be it word processing, spreadsheet or database for instance, the manipulation takes place in memory (RAM). You load the file into RAM when you open the file. When the transaction, calculation or document is saved, the file is saved in its present form to your hard disk.
I suppose it is reasonable to suggest that the hard disk drive is where your investment in time and effort is stored. Therefore it is appropriate to consider how to keep this data, often difficult to replicate, in a safe place.
Much pain may be saved by just being a little aware when working on your PC.
What Indicates Strife?
You should contemplate what may give you an inkling that you may have trouble with your hard drive. There are several things to look or listen for.
• Slow start up from scratch, or a change in the way your system starts up. When we say slow, we mean a change for the worse compared with the last time you started your PC.
• Slower than normal operation. When something you do often, which does not rely on external factors like the Internet for instance, takes more time than it did yesterday, there may be a concerning reason.
• When a program you use frequently starts to behave strangely.
• If your PC starts to make an unusual noise when it is running. While this may be a faulty fan, it just may be a hard disk failing. Seek advice.
Why Does a Disk Get Untidy?
A hard disk is a random access device. When you save a file, the drive starts saving data in the first available spot.
If that spot is not big enough for the whole file, it finds another available spot and places the next bit of the file in there. This may occur many times for a single file. The file becomes fragmented.
When the contents of a file are scattered throughout your hard drive, you PC takes longer to find the file and display it for your attention. It is better, and your PC will work faster, if the file is in one contiguous location.
Think how hard it would be if all your business data was in the staffs’ filing trays on desks throughout the place. To find the files you might need for a day’s work, you may need to look in several spots, through files which are not in alphabetical order. This will take longer that if all the files were in the central filing system.
How do You Optimise the Drive?
The best way to optimise your hard drive is to defragment the data files. Before you do that, we recommend that you clean up the drive contents.
To do this, close all programs and empty your Systray using the Task Manager. Go to Start|Programs|Accessories|System Tools and select Disk Cleanup. You will be asked which drive you wish to clean.
If you have more that one drive, do both/all of them one after the other. After selecting the drive, you will be presented with a list of items you might cleanse. The items in the list will depend on the version of Windows you are running. You may comfortably select all the options, though I omit the setup logs when I run Disk Cleanup.
Click OK and loose all your excess files while compressing files you have not used for some time.
Once the cleanup is complete, go to Start|Programs|Accessories|System Tools and select Disk Defragmenter, or select a more powerful and effective disk management application, like Diskeeper. Run the program.
When it is finished, your files will have been relocated largely into contiguous sectors of the hard drive, using up space left vacant in the disk cleanup procedure and moving files around to optimise the storage of your data.
How Often Should I do This?
In a phrase: the more often the better. If you do it weekly, it will take less time to run than if you run it fortnightly. If you run it daily, it will take less time than if you run it weekly. The more often you run Disk Defragmenter, the faster and more reliably your PC should run.
Give it a go. Good luck.
Tripos is on the Move
On Tuesday 7th, Tripos IT moved from it’s original offices at 104 Greenhill Road, Unley, to its new premises at Unit 8, 198 Greenhill Road, Eastwood, 5063.
This move was prompted by the imminent rejuvenation of the Liberal Party’s State Division Headquarters where we have had offices for over 9 years.
This move has not required any change on telephone numbers or fax number.
We look forward to seeing you in our offices in the future for training, planning or just for a cup of tea or coffee.
For Sale:
In packing up for our move, we have come across a number of Word 2000 and Excel 97 training manuals. If your business uses Word 2000 or Excel 97, and you would like to purchase these, or are in need of training, please call Tripos IT and discuss your requirements.
ADSL 2 and ADSL 2+
These new technologies are being progressively rolled out across the metropolitan area. If you are interested in taking advantage of the potentially improved performance and possibly lower cost solutions available, contact your ISP or Tripos IT for a discussion of the options.
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Thank you.
Stewart Rankin Pty Ltd – ACN 007 972 901 & DL & LD Greenhough trading as
TRIPOS IT
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