As you use your computer, the hard drive collects a lot of data. But this data doesn’t arrange itself neatly into tidy piles. It becomes intertwined, mixed up and doesn’t use space efficiently. This means that when your computer tries to run a program or search for a file, it has to sort through this messed-up data to find what it needs. This causes your computer to slow down.
You may think that your computer is outdated – you may even consider replacing it. But running a simple defrag may clear up a lot of the issues you’re experiencing and help to make your computer run quickly and smoothly again.
When you defrag your hard drive, you’re basically sorting out the data into tidy piles so that your computer can find it easily. You’re also making sure that the storage space is used efficiently. When the data is easy to find, your computer can run much faster.
What problems can defragging help with?
If your hard drive hasn’t been defragged for a while, it might not just run slower. You may also experience the following problems:
- Backups will slow down and may not even complete
- Boot-up takes longer
- Files take longer to open and longer to save
- The hard drive keeps running in the background (this is known as disk thrashing — the constant writing and rewriting of small amounts of data)
- Virus scans take a long time to run
Defrag to make your system more reliable
If your hard drive is very fragmented, you may also experience problems with:
- Crashes and system hangs
- Corrupt files, leading to the loss of data
- The computer fails to boot up
- Errors and conflicts between different programs and applications
- Hard drive failures
Is defragging easy to do?
Defragging your hard drive is a simple procedure. There are plenty of online tutorials on how to do it. However, if you’re in Cairns and you’d rather leave your computer problems to the experts, contact Computerman today.
