There is a quote attributed to American poet and novelist Don Williams Jr. that says “despair is most often the offspring of ill-preparedness” and like many other great truisms these words carry weight in a number of arenas. As the New Year approaches most businesses have outlined what they believe to be the best course to ensure profitability, paying close attention to things like employee training, efficiency, communication, and reliability. Of course outlining these goals hardly guarantees that any of them will be reached; a company first has to ask themselves if they are prepared to carry out their course of action.
If not then the company will almost certainly experience the despair that is referenced in the Don Williams Jr. quote, and that despair can be a costly byproduct of a company’s ill-preparedness.
When a company is looking to improve employee training, increase efficiency, better their communication and ensure reliability there is a common element that must be addressed, their computer network system. Each of these goals can be achieved when a company maintains the health of their network and this should be the first step in preparing for the desired results.
The importance of a computer network system can’t be overstated as it facilitates just about every action that a company takes. From sharing files, data, software and hardware to serving as a means for internal communication and storing valuable information the network system the computer network system is the backbone of every company. When that network begins to show cracks all of these functions become compromised and the result can be disastrous.
Those cracks are typically the result of a computer disease known as fragmentation and failing to prepare for its attack can cause a company’s speed to collapse. This is because fragmentation affects every file that is stored on a network system and because of this it affects every aspect of a business.
It’s not hard to recognize fragmentation when you know what to look for but the symptoms are often attributed to the wrong problem. Lost files and problems with communication are thought to be issues brought on by a virus while a reduction in speed and reliability may get blamed on the age of a hard drive; the reality is more often than not those defects are caused by fragmentation.
This computer disease is a naturally occurring problem that is born on a network’s drive, regardless of size or age, and becomes worse the longer it goes untreated. Fragmentation breeds as activity on a network increases, meaning every time a saved file is modified the computer disease multiplies. As drives are designed the most valuable commodity is space and because of this each file that is saved is placed directly behind the last file saved, leaving no room between the files. When one of those files is modified and resaved it no longer fits in its original space and the hard drive is forced to cut the excess information and store it in the next available space, this is now known as a fragmented file.
Because there is no limit to how many times a file can be fragmented it is common for a computer network system to have a single file broken into hundreds or thousands of pieces, all spread across a hard drive. As the problem gets worse the speed in which the drive operates slows because it has to gather all of those pieces each time a file is recalled. Eventually that task becomes too great for a drive and the result is a network crash, a catastrophe that every business has to avoid.
A company may think that they are protected from the dangers of fragmentation because they have a larger drive, capable of storing an immense amount of information but really these drives pose the greatest danger. Larger drives not protected against fragmentation are simply putting off the inevitable and when that inevitable comes the damage is multiplied because more files are lost.
Just as the axiom goes, “the bigger they are the harder they fall” and when these larger drives crash the wreckage left behind could be too much to overcome for a company.
Fortunately fragmentation is a disease that can be easily eradicated and for those companies who have the foresight to prepare for disaster prevention it takes just one simple step, installing defragmentation software.
Companies like Diskeeper specialize in creating defragmentation software that is capable of repairing the fragmented files that exist on a drive, gathering the pieces of a broken file and joining them together as a single unit, saving them in one spot, and then ensuring that when that file is recalled and resaved it remains intact. So defragmentation software not only repairs the damaged files and cleans up the hard drive, it prevents a reoccurrence of fragmentation, keeping your computer network system healthy and capable of carrying out the functions demanded by a company.
Those demands are likely tied to the goals outlined earlier and as pointed out they can be met when a company is properly prepared. That preparation comes in the form of defragmentation software and for the New Year aspirations to be realized every company should ensure their computer network system is properly protected.
