Use Disk Defragmenter to Speed Up Your Computer

Windows Vista, like Windows XP, comes with a free Disk Defragmenter. Defragmenting the hard drive on your computer makes it faster by organizing the files that have been spread (fragmented) across the disk closer together to allow them to be found and used quicker. It’s best to set the Disk Defragmenter on a schedule so you don’t have to worry about doing it yourself.

To open Disk Defragmenter go to Start –> All Programs –> Accessories –> System Tools –> Disk Defragmenter

Click Modify schedule.

To optimize the speed you’ll get from using the Disk Defragmenter, schedule it to run at least once a day when you are not using your computer. System performance can slow down while the Disk Defragmenter is running.

You may or may not notice a big difference if you’re hard drive is not heavily fragmented right now, but Disk Defragmenter will keep everything organized so you’ll never see that slow down caused by heavy fragmentation.

There are a few free, and better defragmenter programs such as Power Defragmenter, and Auslogics Disk Defrag, but the best on the market is Diskeeper, which was hired by Microsoft to develop the first Windows defrag program, plus Diskeeper can do some very special tasks like organizing the MFT (Master File Table) to get your disk completely reorganized. Diskeeper has a 30 day trial, but it cost money to use it after that. The free Disk Defragmenter that comes with Windows will meet most everyone’s needs.