Well, as you work with your files and pictures, Windows breaks these files into pieces and stores them all over the drive. It also keeps an index of where these pieces are located. What happens is the more you work, the more the files are broken up. So it takes the Windows Operating System more time to search for these fragments until it has enough to present you with the file. As these pieces become smaller and more scattered it has an effect on your system performance. And as hard drives become larger, this fragmentation of data slows the computer's performance considerably.



Fourtunately the defrag process is really easy:

1) First go to the Start button then Control Panel.

2) In the Control panel select Administrative Tools.

3) From the Administration tools window select Computer Management.

4) Now select Disk Defragmenter from the right hand window panel- high-light the drive you want to defrag (normally C:)

5) Then click the bottom button that says Defragment.

What you will see is a bar that shows Estimated Usage Before Defragmentation and it will show a bunch of different color stripes all mixed up.The goal is to get large blocks of uninterupted color and you will see this happening in the bottom window- Estimated usage after defragmentation.

The larger the hard drive the longer this is going to take, so plan on doing it at night when your business is closed. There is after market software that will do this same function but you can get by nicely with the built in Windows function. You can even make this easier by using Scheduled tasks to have your defrag run at night, all you have to remember is to leave the machine on. This is also a good place to schedule your virus and spyware scans ... but make sure you schedule them to run on different nights to keep the machine from choking.

Also, disable your screensaver, if you have one turned on. Just right click on your desktop and go to properties, then screensaver, then change it to none before starting the defragmentation process. This defrag of your hard drive should increase your system's performance and speed up work at the office.