We’ve all probably sat in traffic and had that dream of being on the road and seeing all green lights and no other car in sight or been standing in a long line at a store during the Holiday Season and fantasized about being the only customer in the mall and having countless store associates catering to our every request. When we’re brought back to the cold reality that there are situations in which we can’t control how fast we get to a destination or complete a transaction we tend to appreciate the things we can control.
Unfortunately this appreciation last about as long as the dream or fantasy and we eventually settle back in to the belief that we have little, if any, say in how quickly things get done.
While we may never get those string of green lights or have that personal shopping experience there are plenty of things that we have an absolute say in when it comes to speed. One such example is the speed in which our computers operate.
Too often we feel that we’re at the mercy of our computers rather than fully understanding that we dictate how they operate. When we throw our hands up and seemingly welcome whatever problems present themselves we blame the computer, thinking we had no role in the affair. It is this attitude that turns very preventable problems into devastating realities.
When it comes to the speed of our computer many of us are convinced that the slowdown of the hard drive is just something that happens due to age and we can do little to stop time. Accepting this misinformation is what leads to the unpleasant experience of sitting in front of a computer that seems to take forever to complete a request.
While it’s true that a computer’s speed will slow over time, it is only a half-truth. That slowdown can often be attributed to the computer owner’s failure to properly protect their hard drive from a potentially devastating computer disease known as fragmentation. It is this disease that eats away at the speed of your computer but, just like many other diseases, can be treated and eradicated.
For those people who get frustrated with their computers because it seems to take forever to boot up or because opening files and applications becomes a timely process, the blame falls directly on their shoulders. If you’re tired of waiting to access and send email or dealing with a sluggish Internet it’s time to understand you bear the responsibility of your own displeasure.
This is because those slowdowns are directly tied to that computer disease fragmentation and once again, it’s preventable. Fragmentation is a natural occurrence on the hard drive; in fact your hard drive was designed to fragment files as a means of saving space. Of course that opened up other problems and that resulted in your slowdown.
Fragmentation relates to how the hard drive saves and stores files. This process is done in a contiguous manner, placing one file directly after the next as they are saved. By storing files in this manner there is no way a saved file can be opened and modified and then resaved in the same space because it will no longer fit. The hard drive’s solution is to cut the excess information and place it in the next available space; this is now a fragmented file. Because there is no limit to how many times a file can be fragmented the hard drive can be littered with thousands of pieces from a single file.
As the fragmented files mount on the hard drive the speed of the computer takes a direct hit and this is why we deal with those long delays. Of course the important thing to understand is that all of this is preventable.
You might not be able to close your eyes and eliminate traffic or snap your fingers and move to the front of the checkout but you can install defragmentation software and eliminate the delays that have plagued your hard drive.
Defragmentation software will identify fragmented files on your hard drive, piece together the portions that belong to a single file and then save them in one space. By doing this the speed of the computer is greatly enhanced, no matter how old the computer may be. This is because the hard drive no longer has to gather fragments to produce a file but rather can just grab the entire file and deliver it to your screen.
This process not only speeds up your computer but also extends its life because it the hard drive is capable of performing at its optimal ability. So continue dreaming and fantasizing about a world of no traffic and no shopping lines but keep your eyes open when it comes to solving your slow computer performance and install defragmentation software before it’s too late.
