TuneUp Utilities - 2011 User Manual download pdf (Page 58)

Defragmenting the Hard Disk

In the following chapters, you will find out why it is important to do so and how you can use the TuneUp

Drive Defrag module to defragment your hard disks.

Introduction

There are many reasons why a computer may become noticeably slower over time. One of them is the grad-

ual fragmentation of the hard disk. This can be described as follows:

New files are first saved as a block to an empty hard disk one after the other. If you then, for example,

deleted a file in the middle, there would be a gap in the hard disk. Windows uses this gap later to store the

next file that you save to the hard disk. If this gap is not big enough, Windows then splits the file and stores

the second half at another location. Over time, more and more gaps are created and more and more files are

fragmented into pieces (fragments), i.e. the degree of fragmentation increases.

This really slows down the performance of your computer: Every time you call up a file, this has to be read

from the hard disk, which would of course happen faster if the file was stored in one place. In technical

terms: If fragmentation is high, the hard disk reading heads must always be realigned in order that they can

load the individual fragments of a file.

A simple way to speed up your system is therefore to defragment the hard disk. As the conventional defrag-

mentation often takes a long time, TuneUp Drive Defrag offers you two different modes. You either decide

for yourself how defragmentation should take place, or allow TuneUp Drive Defrag to make the decision

for you.

Find out below what exactly happens during the two defragmentation modes:

Thorough Defragmentation

This defragmentation mode arranges the newly sorted files particularly intelligently: system files that are

used frequently are stored at the start of the hard disk, so that Windows can find them again in no time at

all.

It is clear that this defragmentation mode will take longer than simply consolidating the files. TuneUp Drive

Defrag is therefore also carried out with particularly low priority so that you can continue working almost

undisturbed. This procedure speeds up the booting of Windows considerably. Frequently used programs

also start faster. This noticeably increases the performance of the computer.

Fast Defragmentation

This defragmentation mode consolidates all files again so that they can be read noticeably faster.

The advantage of this method is the speed with which it is carried out: The performance of your hard disk is

increased in no time at all.

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TuneUp Utilities - 2011 User Manual Page 58