Of all of the devices inside your computer, the hard drive is the single device that requires the most maintenance. It is in constant bidirectional communication with the CPU, saving data and retrieving data. The magnetic platters inside the hard drive are in almost-continual spinning motion, and the read/write head flutters quickly over the platter surface. Over time, the hard disk is subjected to a number of CPU processes that modify and add all sorts of data that is stored on the drive.
There are several maintenance procedures with which you should be familiar, which we can clarify by describing some of the problems that can occur.
When you surf the Internet, pages are cached (temporarily stored) on your hard drive. Temporary folders and files are often created when you download files from the Internet and extract them onto your hard drive. These folders and files can remain on your hard drive, taking up more and more space, until you remove them.
Temporary files may also be created when you work with a word processor, spreadsheet, or other application. The ‘working’ copy is usually saved as a temporary file, and while it should be deleted when you save the file and exit the program, it sometimes is not. After some time, your hard drive becomes unnecessarily cluttered.
Further, when you first create and save a data file on a new hard drive, the file is saved in contiguous blocks or sectors on the drive. Eventually the hard drive becomes more filled up with data and/or applications. Subsequently, new data files, or files which become larger in size as you work on them at a later date, are split up into pieces, and these file chunks are stored wherever there is available space. The fragmentation of these files creates a couple of problems. One is that it will take longer for the file to be opened, as the file fragments have to be reassembled before the file can be opened. More importantly, file fragmentation creates more wear and tear on the drive, as the read/write head is forced to move back and forth across the spinning platter searching for and retrieving the file fragments.
There may also be software programs/applications installed on your computer that you are no longer using. Removing programs which you no longer need can free up significant space on your drive.
Yet another problem is that the magnetic surface of the platters (or disks) inside the hard drive can deteriorate and break down over time, rendering some sectors unreliable. Unless these bad sectors are identified and flagged, it’s possible for you to save data that will not be able to be retrieved later on.
Fortunately, there are solutions to all of these problems. The solutions should be implemented in a certain order. For example, you would not want to defragment the drive before eliminating all the junk temp files. What you want to do is get rid of the file clutter first, not simply move them to a new location and then still have to delete them. So here’s the recommended order of events:
So the first step is to clear out the temporary Internet files – copies of web pages that you’ve visited that have been saved for faster viewing. Over time, these pages can take up quite a bit of space on the hard drive.