Speed up Your Slow Hard Drive

Constant accessing, noisy and freezing are all symptoms of a slow hard drive. A big fast hard drive is a must for any modern PC. The hard drive acts as the primary storage unit for all your data. And you would like to retrieve your files and access your programs as fast as possible. Each new generation of PCs offers bigger hard drives. However an oversize cluttered drive just is a big slow hard drive. Nevertheless, you can easily maintain the quality of your hard drive and learn how to avoid experiencing slow hard drive problems.

STEP 1: Scan Your Hard Drive

One of the major causes of a slow hard drive is errors. Some hard drives errors can be caused by the bumping your PC. This can actually cause physical damage to the hard drive. The damage is known as a bad sector. A very slow hard drive is usually the result of this phenomenon. Bad sector cause your hard drive to constantly try to read inaccessible information. Running Check Disk will help you determine if your hard drives has bad sectors.

1. Click the Windows button and open the Computer folder.
2. Find and Select your hard drive, right click the hard drive icon.
3. Choose Properties from the drop down list.
4. In the Local Disk Properties dialog box, click the Tools tab.
5. Click the Check Now button.
6. For maximum cleanup click "Automatically fix..." and "Scan for ..."
7. If you see new dialog window, click Schedule disk check to start.

Switch FAT to NTFS. You can increase your hard drive speed by switching FAT to NTFS. The NTFS configurations provides increased security, file–by–file compression, quotas, and even encryption. The default setting for XP may be set to FAT which is slower system. However if you have Vista converted to the NTFS16 or NTFS32

Wait until it finish.

STEP 2: Clean Up Your Hard Drive

Each file on your computer is stored in more than one place. A slow hard drive has useless and abandoned files stored in multiple places on your computer. This is similar to having a very messy room. When you are in a rush and need to find your keys. It will take forever to find them. Same goes for finding files in your hard drive.

1. Click the Windows button and open the Computer folder.
2. Find and Select your hard drive, right click the hard drive icon.
3. Choose Properties from the drop down list.
4. In the Local Disk Properties dialog box, click the Disk Cleanup tab.
5. Choose Files from all users on this computer.
6. Click OK after the check box for all the files you want to delete.

Choosing More Options will give you the chance clean up your slow hard drive from programs and shadow copies. Note that shadow copies are used as system of back up that can save your files once deleted. This makes data recovery easier but causes slow hard drive problems. So, proceed with caution.

The Registry is your hard drives largest filing system. Any errors or corrupted files can cause everything from hard drive problems to sluggish startup and shutdowns. Slow hard drive problems occur because the CPU will constantly access the hard drive for information that has to be immediately delivered. If the registry is fragmented and unorganized your CPU will stall and your hard drive constantly cycles through your registry system.

STEP 3: Defragment Your Hard Drives

1. Open the Start Menu
2. Click on Computer
3. Right Click your hard drive icon.
4. Scroll down to the Properties.
5. In the Properties Menus, Open the Tools menu.
6. Choose Defragment Now.
7. In the Disk Deframenter menu. Click on Defragment

The image displays a hard drive with a large amount of fragmented data. This is demonstrated by the collection of broken bars. Each color indicates different data fields, files, and blocks of data. In "healthy" computer, one with little fragmentation, the disk defragmenter would display a collection of large continuous blocks consisting of one color.

The result of the defragmentation process demonstrates a collection of large contiguous colors fields. This is an indication that large amounts of similar data have been group in specific locations on the hard drives thus making the data easily accessible and eliminating one of the major causes of fragmented hard drive syndrome.