Automate Defrag
Defragmenting your hard disk(s) can be a very time consuming business, but David Dorn shows you how to waste no time at all!
A fragmented hard disk is a slow hard disk - and the more fragmented it becomes the slower it becomes. So, it's a good idea to keep yours as un-fragmented as is possible. That, in turn, means running Defrag regularly.
The problem is, of course, that Defrag can take forever to do its thing, and, even though it's possible to run it in the background while you're trying to work on other things, that's not the best solution. Why? Because it slows your machine to snail's pace and, quite probably, will result in Defrag constantly re-starting itself.
Far better, then, to automate a weekly Defrag session that happens overnight while you're dreaming of England winning the World Cup. Here's how:
Click Start -> Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools, and choose Scheduled Tasks (if you have Task Scheduler running in your System Tray, you can just double-click that).
Double-click Add Scheduled Task and click Next.
Choose Disk Defragmenter from the list of programs, and click Next.
Select the frequency with which you want to run the program, click Next
Choose the day and time and click OK
That's pretty much it. I'd strongly suggest you leave your PC on overnight (even if it's just for the one night per week) and choose a weekly defrag session to run that night - especially if you have large hard disks - personal observation shows that a full defrag on a fairly full 80GB hard disk needs an overnight run!
