Routine Maintenance - ScanDisk and Defrag

Most of us are aware that your car needs to have routine maintenance performed on it. Every 3000 miles we take the car in for an oil change. Every 6000 miles or so, we get the tires rotated. So how many of you know that your computer has some simple things that you can do yourself to keep your computer out of the “mechanic” shop?

The two things I would like to tell you about this go around are Scandisk and Defrag.

Scandisk:

All of the information on your computer is stored on the hard drive. Your computer then uses “pointers” which simply point to where the data is stored on the drive, much like road signs. Imagine trying to drive someplace if some of the road signs have been moved or removed. This can happen to your computer as well. Scandisk puts all of the signs back where they belong. This is a simple description of Scandisk but you should get the picture. You can run Scandisk several different ways but I will tell you the one that I think is the easiest.

First, make sure you are not running any other applications. (The easiest way to achieve this is to perform scandisk and defrag after the computer first boots up. If you have an Instant Messenger program that starts up automatically close it as well by right clicking it’s icon in the taskbar, which is in the bottom right corner of your screen by the time display, and selecting “exit” or “close”.) Also turn off your Screensaver. (Do this by clicking the right mouse button on any empty part of the desktop and then selecting Properties. Then select the screensaver tab and you will see a drop down menu about half way down with your current screensaver selected. Click on the drop down menu and select “None”. Click OK to close the window and you are ready. When you are all done with both Scandisk and Defrag, you can reverse the process to turn your screensaver back on.) Now that your screensaver is off, simply click on the Start button and move your mouse pointer up to the word [run] and click it. Then type in the word scandisk and press ENTER. This brings up the Scandisk program. Make sure that Standard is selected as well as Automatically Fix Errors should be selected.

We’ll discuss the Thorough test in future articles. Click the Start button and sit back and watch the action. When the program completes it will give you a short report on the results. Close the report and then close Scandisk and you are ready to move on to Defrag.

Disk Defragmenter:

When windows accesses data from the hard drive, it scatters or “Fragments” the data to various areas of the hard drive. What results is data now being stored in a contiguous fashion rather than being spread all over the place. Imagine looking for a particular pair of shoes when someone has scattered your shoes all over the house. This is what your computer has to deal with the more “fragmented” your hard drive gets. The solution is to run Defragmenter. This can be started several ways just like Scandisk, but let’s keep it simple.

You should already have all programs shut down already as well as your screensaver turned off from running Scandisk. Go back to your Start button and click it. Then go to Run and click it. Then type in Defrag.exe and press ENTER. This brings up the Defragmenter tool. Select the drive you want to defragment, usually the C: drive and click ok. Click start and you are on your way. If you have had your computer for a while and have never run this utility, it will take a while to complete. If you want to see what the Defragmenter program is doing, click on the Details button and watch the show. When it is completed, it will ask you if you want to Quit Defragmenter. Click yes and you are done. Turn your screensaver back on and start enjoying your computer again.

If you run these two utilities on a weekly, or at least monthly basis, they won’t take as long to run and your computer will thank you for it. If you run into snags running these or have other questions feel free to call me or email me.

           MSR Technologies
           10928 North 56th Street
           Tampa, FL 33617
           Phone: (813) 868-1129
           Toll Free 1-877-265-4581

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