For most of us, life will cease to exist if our system fails. We have a whole lot of information stored on them. If not, we have a host of memories through photos and videos. So our concern for the computer is quite understandable. Here is an article that will tell you how you can take care of the hard disk, the very heart of the system.
Care for the hard disk
All the files and folders that we create and manipulate each day get stored on the hard disk. The space allocated on the hard disk for each of this is taken care of by the operating system and remains unknown to the user. What we fail to understand as a result if this is that the space on the disk is allocated in fragments each time.
When you try to read from or write into the file, you may see a change in speed based on the way space is allocated on the hard disk. The more fragmented the file is, greater will be the time to access it. Hence., for best performance of the system, we have to make sure that the hard disk is not too fragmented. To do this, we can use the disk defragmentor utility.
If you are using Windows 95/98/ME/XP, follow these steps:
1. Click on the Start button
2. Click on Programs
3. Select the options Accessories and System Tools
If you are using a Mac system, you can use the Speed Disk tool utility for the same purpose.
Though there is no hard and fast rule, it is good to defragment the hard disk once in six months to keep the system healthy and improve its performance.
Another problem that one may encounter is that of a corrupted sector in the hard disk. This too has a solution that you can adopt. The disk scanner does the job of finding all such “hard”errors and keeping a tab of it. This way, the Operating system gets to ensure that no data is stored in the corrupted area. In addition, you may also encounter “soft” errors where the Operating system is not able to retrieve parts of your file. The simple solution to these problems is as follows:
If you are running a Windows 95/98/XP/ME operating system, then you can use the ScanDisk utility found under Programs/Accessories/System Tools. This takes care of the ‘hard” and “soft” errors alike.
When using the Mac system, you can run the Disk First Aid program or alternately use the utility called the Disk Doctor which comes as part of Norton utilities for Macintosh systems.
