Maintain Hard Disk Drives in Top Condition

You must have often seen your new computer beginning to crawl from those blistering speeds that you were once proud of. Well the good news is you can get those speeds back with some simple maintenance tips and tricks.
There are some simple maintenance tools available with every operating system(OS).
Disk CleanupEach time you install applications or simply work and surf the Internet it creates temporary files on the disk. Once you exit your work these files are no longer needed. Over time this burgeoning data fills up your hard disk drive and causes fragmentation of data. This is the main cause that puts chains on your nimble footed beauty. You have to just run this utility to restore its pride. Here is how- Go to Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Cleanup. On the dialog box that pops up select drive C to be cleaned (the OS drive).
ScanDiskThis utility determines any errors on your hard disk drive and repairs the same. Unscanned disks can have bad sectors and any data written on these can result in data loss. To scan any drive - Go to Windows Explorer, right click and select Properties. Click Tools[/] tab and under [i]Error Checking, click "Check Now". Bad sectors if any will be repaired or marked up. No data will be written onto these bad sectors henceforth.
Disk DefragmentationFragmentation results when data on disk is dispersed on the hard disk due to prolonged read and write operations as also while installation of large applications. With passage of time the free space on the hard disk drive does not appear in a chunk, but in smaller chunks and when you install applications data is written in available free space. You can well imagine what happens when the disk head has to scurry from one location to another to launch applications. Disk Defragmentation organises and moves around data files together so that read and write operations happen faster. Here is how to start the defragmentor - Go to Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Defragmentor. Running this utility once a month is recommended. However do not overuse this utility.
These maintenance tips should keep your hard disk drives in top notch condition.