Transcription:

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Today we’re going to talk a little bit about defragmentation, how to do it in Windows Vista and other operating systems, and what it really is and things like that. To get to it in Vista you just go to my computer, right‑click on your C drive. Go to properties, and then tools. The middle option right here is defragmentation.

What it does is it’s going to scan your drive. Think of your hard drive as kind of a filing cabinet. In the beginning everything’s filed alphabetically and everything looks good. But after awhile people come along, maybe you, maybe your kids, maybe your friend, they throw things in that filing cabinet and it’s not organized. You install programs, things don’t stay together. Things are all over the place. What it does is it slows down your computer’s performance.

So once you start it, if you’re in Vista it will allow you to schedule it. For me it’s scheduled one a.m. every Wednesday starting at 1/1/2005. You can also run it automatically by hitting defragment now. Personally, I like to run it from safe mode just so that it doesn’t get interrupted. To get into safe mode you just need to restart your computer. Start tapping the F8 key until you get the option. It’s going to ask you “Do you want to boot normally?” “Restore less on good configuration?” One of the options will be safe mode. Select it and do the exact same thing I’m showing you right now and defragment it.

Do it one night before you go to bed. The reason is oftentimes, one, while it’s running you really shouldn’t be changing anything under computer or moving anything around. Two, if you do move things around, it has to start all over again. So it’s best to run it when you’re not around. That’s why running it at night while you’re asleep is really the best option.

But you can choose defragment now. It’s going to ask you which disks you want to defragment. If you have multiple hard drives, you can select them. It’s just going to start. Now depending on how big your hard drive is, or how fragmented it may be, it could go an hour or two hours or three hours… it might run several hours. So don’t be too concerned about that. Again, that’s why I usually say run it at night.

Defragmenting your hard drive is something very simple that you can do that’s going to help keep your computer running smoother longer. It’s going to keep your programs running at a higher level. It’s going to keep everything organized. It’s just really, really good practice to do.

If you have any questions about how to defragment your disk or why you do it, hopefully this video helped. If it did, hit that subscribe button and make sure you shoot over to our website for even more lessons. Thanks and have a great day.