Keep Your Desktop and Hard Disk Tidy
Is your computer desktop your virtual dumping group? Storing files and/or lots of shortcuts on your computer’s desktop will demand more memory from the computer. It is ok to keep some commonly used items here (or better yet shortcuts) but don’t make a habit of sprawling out all of your work on the Desktop. If you deal with a lot of documents or files on a regular basis, create a temporary work folder instead of littering the desktop.
If you are big on downloading software, videos or music, be sure to clean up after yourself. Don’t leave setup programs or media files on your hard disk that you are never going to use again; this just wastes your computer’s valuable disk space. Likewise, do not let your recycle bin or various temporary file folders fill up and fill your hard disk. If your disk space gets too low for any of these reasons, performance problems are sure to follow.
To easily empty your recycle bin and various temporary file folders, such as your temporary Internet folder, use Window’s build in “Disk Cleanup” utility. Access the “Disk Cleanup” utility by clicking:
Start – > All Programs – > Accessories – > System Tools – > Disk Cleanup
The tool is very easy to use; simply check the boxes next to the categories of files you would like to remove from your computer.
There is one option to avoid however: “Compress Old Files”. This is meant to save disk space if a drive is running very low, but for this option, saved space is traded for performance.
De-fragment Your Hard Disk Regularly
The way your computer stores files to the hard disk is a lot less pretty than what you see in your Windows Explorer file browser. The Windows operating system translates the digital mess of what is actually recorded on your hard disk so you can understand it. It also translates your clicks, drags and keystrokes into instructions the hard disk understands. The hard disk is read and written to in a sequence and through references rather than through the directory tree structure you may be familiar with. There are also many hidden files and some abstract data recorded to your hard disk that Windows constantly accesses.
Over time, with perpetual reads and writes to the hard disk, the way that the data is organized there becomes less and less efficient. For example, a digital photo you have saved may be split up into a dozen or more segments and an instruction set for associating and locating those pieces. YES! WHAT A MESS! Also, files that your computer needs to access very frequently may be stored on a part of the hard disk that is the slowest to read, while your report on Dinosaurs from the 3rd grade (or some other equally obscure file you’ll never look at again) is stored on the fastest part of the disk. When your hard disk gets in this gross state of disorder it is said to be fragmented, and your computer begins to crawl.
