Whether its tax returns, family photos or banking information just about every computer owner has placed something valuable on their hard drive. Without much thought we have grown accustomed to saving these important files, always believing they will be accessible whenever we choose to retrieve them.
In many ways we have placed a blind trust in our computers, convinced that once we save something on the hard drive we have little to worry about in the way of losing a file. Unfortunately, as many have found out, that simply isn’t true. While computers are capable of storing a massive amount of documents and files there are certain measures that all computer owners should take to ensure they never have to pick up the pieces of a crash.
Despite what many people may want to think, a computer crash almost never occurs out of the blue, there are typically several warning signs that indicate there is something wrong. It is then up to the computer owner to address the problem or face the consequences.
One of the most obvious warning signs a computer owner should look for is an inconsistency in the reliability of their hard drive. More often than not this reliability issue is tied to a computer disease known as fragmentation and when left unchecked a crash will inevitably occur.
A computer reliability problem shows itself in many forms, most notably in the speed by which the hard drive responds to a request. This could be evident in a slowdown in boot up time, difficulty browsing the Internet, long delays in loading files and applications or trouble accessing and sending emails. Each of these problems is typical of a hard drive that has been exposed to too many fragmented files.
These fragmented files exist due to the very nature in which a hard drive saves and stores files. A hard drive is designed to place saved files in a contiguous manner, with each new file being placed directly behind the last saved. Because of this system the hard drive is incapable of properly handling saved files that need to be modified. When a saved file is modified it will no longer fit in the same space that it once occupied so the hard drive is forced to cut the excess information and place it in the next available space. This is now a fragmented file.
Most hard drives have a countless amount of files saved and a single file can be fragmented into thousands of pieces making the problem all the more obvious. Each time you try and retrieve one of these fragmented files it takes your hard drive longer and longer to find all the pieces, thus the slowdown.
