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Maintaining and managing your hard drive 71
Maintaining and managing your hard
drive
Regular maintenance can keep your hard drive operating efficiently, and good
file management can keep your system free of unwanted files while making
important files secure and easier to find.
Hard drive maintenance utilities
By regularly using the utilities available with many operating systems, you
can help maintain the performance of your hard drive. Examples include:
■ ScanDisk
■ Check Disk
■ Disk Defragmenter
Refer to the software documentation or visit the online help system of your
operating system for specific utilities available and instructions on their use.
Checking for bad sectors and other disk problems
Bad sectors are parts of a hard drive or diskette that will not hold data. A lost
allocation unit is a group of sectors that has lost its place in the table that
the operating system uses to locate files. Utilities such as ScanDisk and Check
Disk check the hard drive for bad sectors or lost allocation units and let you
fix them.
Use this type of utility from once a week to once a month, depending on
how often you use your system. Also use them if you have any hard drive
problems.
Using a disk defragmenter to improve efficiency
When working with files, Windows may divide the files into pieces and store
the pieces at different places on the hard drive. This division of files, called
fragmentation, is normal. However, to access a file, the hard drive must search
for the pieces of the file and put the file back together, which can slow down
your system.
A disk defragmenter brings all the separate pieces back together. Defragment
your computer frequently to improve system performance.
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