What you should know about your hard drive:

• How much total space does it have?
• How much free space is available?
• How many RPMs does it run at?

To find out the total space on your hard drive, left-click the “Start” Button, then right-click on “My Computer”.  A menu will appear at the point of your click, so now select “Explore” from the menu.  This view of Windows Explorer has two window panes.  The left pane is for the folders and the right pane is for your drives, shared folders and your documents folder.  In the left pane, look for Local Disk C: and you will notice that the total disk space and the total free space are listed there for you.

If the free space on your disk is less than 10% of your total drive space, then you really may want to think about replace the drive with a larger drive or you should do some serious cleaning to free up some space.  When you have multiple programs open and your computer’s memory is maxed, it looks to use more of the hard drive’s paging file to help with memory operations.  When your hard drive is just about full, it makes it hard to find files over the span of the whole drive and this can slow down disk access.

Hard drives usually come in 3 speeds: 5400, 7200 and 10000 rpm.  The 10000 rpm drive are more expensive but well worth it if you hope to increase pc speed.

Hard Drive Maintenance

What can you do to make sure your hard drive continues to hum along without delay?  I have listed below what you can do to maintain your hard drive while helping in the process of increasing computer speed.

1. First Disk Clean up (See more on this here: Slow Computer Fix
2. We want to remove unwanted files, so run CCleaner next
3. Look through the documents and download folders for files you don’t need and delete them (use caution)
4. Scan Disk is good at fixing hard drive errors
5. Download and install Defraggler, start pc in safe mode, then run Defraggler. Disk Defragment software.

After completing these steps, you should notice a pc speed boost and your hard drive will thank you because it doesn’t have to work as hard.  If you are want to learn more about how to increase your computer speed, check back soon as I hope to post a few more articles on the subject.

Cheers,

Steve

I will go over the following Free Tools which will help in the process of fixing a slow computer:

• Disk Cleanup
• Scan Disk
• Defrag
• CCleaner

When your hard drive begins to run out of disk space, you will notice your computer slowing down and it’s probably time to do a little maintenance.  First, you really need to go through your computer and remove files and programs that you no longer use.  To remove programs you no longer use, click on the Start Button -> Control Panel -> Add or Remove Programs and remove any programs you no longer use.  These programs may be old games you don’t play any more or maybe you have trial versions of programs you no longer need.  Don’t remove programs you are unsure of.  You can always do a Google search to find out what a program is and whether you need it on your computer.

Now that the old programs are removed, lets run Disk Cleanup.  Click on the Start Button -> All Programs – > Accessories -> System Tools -> Disk Cleanup.  When you click on Disk Cleanup, it will start to scan your computer files that are no longer need and when done it will show you a report of how much space it can free up.

Disk Cleanup

As you can see in the image above, this computer has 9 gigs (WOW!!) of disk space that can be freed up by using this tool.  You can scroll through the list and place a check mark next to the items you would like removed from your computer.  These files are mainly going to be files in the Temp directories or old compressed files.  These file are ok to remove.  The next step would be to press the “OK” button and let your computer clean up the hard drive for you.  It’s a good idea to set a maintenance schedule and run this program about once a month.

Now that the computer has been cleaned up a bit, lets scan the hard drive for errors.  As a hard drive ages, it can develop bad sectors which could cripple your computer if the bad sector is where windows system files are stored, so it’s a good idea to scan your hard drive for errors every couple of months.  To start the scan disk program, double-click you “My Computer” icon.  Then, right-click on the C: Drive (local disk C) and from the menu that pops up pick “Properties”.  Now, click on the Tools tab and then click the “Check Now” button in the “Error Checking” section.  This will start the program and bring you to the disk options menu.  Check both boxes like the image below:

Scan Disk - Check both boxes to fix errors and sectors

This Scan Disk program needs to run in Dos mode to completely check your hard drive without interfering with Windows so the program will tell you that it will start the next time the computer is rebooted.  Close all of your programs and go ahead and reboot now to run the hard drive scan.  When your computer reboots, it will come to a blue screen that goes through a number of steps for scanning your hard drive for errors which could help in the process to fix slow pc.  Once it is complete, the computer will boot into Windows like normal.

In my next post, “Slow Computer Fix: Part II“, I will discuss the other two Tools: Defrag and CCleaner.  Fixing a slow computer can be a tedious process and can require many steps, so be sure to check out How to Fix a Slow Computer – Part I and How to Fix a Slow Computer – Part II.

Take it easy,

Steve