The myth of defragmenting; "It speeds up performance on my computer" and "It frees up space on your hard drive".
"It speeds up performance on my computer"; Kinnndaaa...
There's no real noticeable difference that I've ever witnessed when defragmenting your hard drive. But there, supposedly should be and I'll explain why in the next question.
"It frees up space on your computer" NO.
Defragmenting is the process of reorganizing fragmented files so that they're easier to find.
It's like a library. When the library's new, all the books are organized on the shelves perfectly. Now, when people check out books, they have to return them, but if they're lazy, or just don't remember, they could just stick that book any old place. Everyone else does the same thing.
The librarian's job, or the job of the defragmenter, is to go through the scattered books and organize them so they're easier to access.
You're not getting rid of any books/files so you're not freeing up any space. Like I said in the first "myth" this more improves performance if anything, because it makes files easier to find, thus making the load time of folders faster, but since you're not removing anything, it will not free up space.
It's suggested that you defragment your main drive every couple of months, but I don't think it's that necessary to do it that often, unless you are constantly adding, deleting, and moving files around on your computer.
Defragmenting is a long process, some people have claimed their defragmenter took 12 hours to complete, while the average say 6 hours.
I use Smart Defrag for defragging now, ( http://www.iobit.com/iobitsmartdefrag.html)
but Windows comes with it's own defragger.
Start>All Programs>Accessories>System Tools>Disk Defragmenter
If you're really looking for faster performance, a cleaner HD etc. check out these downloads. (All are either 100% free of free to use with option to buy for more features, BUT THEY ALL WORK WITHOUT PAYING.)
CCleaner- http://www.ccleaner.com/
What is CCleaner? CCleaner cleans up your hard drive of all that junk that clutters up your computer and hinders performace. Things such as temporary files/internet files, cookies, temporary downloads, log files etc. And it empties your recycle bin for you as well.
I've gotten up to over 1GB more space in one scan thanks to this thing.
It also comes with a registry cleaner, but I do not recommend anyone touch it, unless you know how to reverse the changes it makes. Changing registry values can seriously screw up your computer.
WinDirStat- http://windirstat.info/
What is WinDirStat? WinDirStat (Let's just say WDS for now) scans your computer and tells you which files take up how much space on your HD. Then you can manually remove whichever files you wish.
WDS is named as such because it lists the statistics of your computer's hard drive.
Windows Directory Statistics.
