Heavy-Duty Disk Defragmentation

Reader Jairaj Guleria writes: Could you talk about products to defrag the drive or individual files? My Outlook file has grown to 3 gigs and the regular defragger in XP doesn't seem to want to deal with it.

First a quick tech lesson about hard disks for the novices. Because of the way computers are designed, data is stored in small segments on your disk. Part of the genius of modern storage design is that all those segments don't have to be located right next to each other or in sequence: Your computer can figure out how to reconstruct a file or program even if it is strewn across a hard drive in 1000 pieces. Because Windows frees up storage space when you delete files or save new versions of them, storage is freed up rather haphazardly. This is normal. However, the result is that your hard drive over time becomes fragmented.

Disk fragmentation, when it's severe, can degrade system performance quite a bit. In fact, Windows includes a tool to defragment hard drives, and it's a good idea to run it any time you find your computer running slow, especially if your hard drive seems to be grinding away more than normal. The Windows defragger is located at All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter. Just click Analyze and Windows will tell you if defragging the drive will help performance.

As Jairaj notes, the Windows defragmenter has some limitations, and some users have reported it having trouble with very large files. If the Windows version doesn't work for you, you'll need to move up to something a little more powerful. And really you have only one choice: Executive Software's Diskeeper, a very powerful (yet pretty simple) disk defragmenting tool. Diskeeper is an ancient tool that's gone through more versions and upgrades than Windows itself. It works seamlessly, in the background, and uses fewer resources than the Windows version. (You pretty much won't be able to use your PC at all during a defrag with the Windows scanner.) Diskeeper also lets you set up regular defragmentation runs, much like a virus scanner.

Give it a whirl. The home version is only $30 and should have all the features you need.