Defragmentation Software, the Key to Maintaining Computer Health, Reliability and Speed

With winter right around the corner many people are heading to their doctor’s office or local pharmacy to get their flu shot, protecting themselves against the headaches brought on by the seasonal malady that affects millions every year. This proactive approach isn’t always just about the convenience of maintaining health; it’s a necessary step to avoid complications that could develop if these individuals were exposed to the flu. These complications are well documented and every year we hear about new strains that can carry with them devastating results.

To avoid disaster physicians urge those individuals who are most vulnerable to these complications to take care of the issue before it is too late. While it seems like common sense to heed the advice of medical practitioners often times it falls on deaf ears and those individuals suffer the consequences.

We shouldn’t be surprised by this seemingly apathetic approach toward health because the truth is most people think they will be alright. This attitude carries over into all aspects of their life and eventually they will pay the price for their indifference.

It may not generate the same kind of attention as our personal health but our computers are exposed to a number of viruses and diseases as well. Just as there are flu shots to safeguard our health there are steps that can be taken to maintain the health of our computers and ignoring those steps will almost always produce the same results, a computer crash.

For the most part computer owners do a good job of protecting their hard drive, installing virus protection software and maintaining a vigilant eye on suspicious emails and links. Unfortunately these aren’t the only problems that could afflict your computer. Nobody gets a flu shot and thinks they are protected against something like diabetes and in the same way you can’t install virus protection and think you’re computer is now immune to other diseases. The truth is your computer is vulnerable to a number of attacks and it is up to you to take a simple action to protect it.

One of the most overlooked problems that computer owners experience is a heavily fragmented hard drive and just like any other disease if fragmentation is left untreated the problem will only get worse. It may start innocently enough as you notice a slight slowdown in your computer’s speed but over time this will develop into a crawling pace, eating away at the system’s reliability and threatening to take out everything that you have saved on your hard drive.

While fragmentation may not get the same headlines as virus threats the end result can be just the same so it is imperative you take the computer disease just as serious as you would a virus. Unlike a virus you can’t just fend off fragmentation by avoiding a link or opening an email, fragmentation is a disease that originates on your hard drive and continues to manifest itself with every action you take on your computer. Fragmentation is related to how your files are saved and stored and because your computer is constantly saving temporary files in addition to the files you create the problem can quickly become out of hand.

In the simplest terms your hard drive saves these files in a contiguous manner, meaning they are placed one after the next with no space in between. As these files are recalled, changes are made and then resaved they no longer fit into their original space, making it necessary for your hard drive to cut the extra information and store it in the next available space. Because it is not uncommon for a single file to be modified hundreds if not thousands of times that means it could be in just as many pieces, scattered across your hard drive. Each time you recall that file it requires a tedious search of the hard drive for each piece, a time consuming effort to say the least.

The most obvious sign that your hard drive has an excess of fragmented files is by its speed. If you have found it difficult to boot up your system, have experienced a slowdown in your Internet browsing, had trouble opening files and applications or problems with your email then chances are fragmentation has taken root. Speed isn’t the only victim of fragmentation as you will almost certainly have to deal with reliability issues which could include the loss of files. Ultimately, if left untreated, fragmentation will claim all of your files as a crash is imminent.

Of course all of this is avoidable and it goes back to the simple action of a flu shot but in your computer’s case it’s the installation of defragmentation software. Something like Diskeeper 2010 is a reliable defragmentation software option that not only repairs your fragmented files, putting all the pieces together and saving it as a single unit, it also protects against future fragmentation. Once this course of action has taken place you will find the health of your computer has been restored, bringing back the speed and reliability that you value so much.

The important thing to remember about defragmentation software is that you don’t have to wait until you have a problem to install it. Defrag software is just as much a preventative measure as it is a cure and you should never forget that an unprotected hard drive is a breeding ground for fragmentation, it’s not a matter of if you get it, it’s a matter of how bad will you let it get. Do yourself a favor and get defragmentation software installed today.