Your Hard Drive

Organize Your Files

Keeping your files organized on your hard disk is the single best way to restore and keep a marked improvement in the performance of your computer. Best of all, getting organized is mostly easy to do and although it takes some time, it doesn't cost a penny!

Keeping your files organized on your hard disk is the single best way to restore and keep a marked improvement in the performance of your computer. Best of all, getting organized is mostly easy to do and although it takes some time, it doesn't cost a penny!

Step One: Backup your entire hard drive

Since we're working with your data, before you do anything, you should back up your computer. Hopefully you have either a tape or CD-RW backup system already. If not, well, you really should consider getting one. You need to backup everything, not just your documents. Really, don't proceed further until you do this step, just in case!

Step Two: Clean up your root directory

Due to the design of DOS, there is a limit to the number of files you can put into your root directory of your hard drive. Try to remove any files you don't need out of the root directory, and make sure you keep the number of folders to a minimum as well. For best results, use Windows Explorer to move any files to sub-folders, delete files, and delete folders as necessary. One helpful hint is to delete any folders or files with a file extension of ".tmp" or have "tmp" in their names. If you have any problems deleting a file, it's because it may be in use by Windows. After you're done, right click on the Recycle Bin icon on the desktop and then click on the "Empty Recycle Bin" option on the pop-up menu.

Step Three: Correct any errors on your hard drive

In Windows Explorer, right click on your hard drive (e.g. C:) and select "Properties" from the drop-down menu. Select the "Tools" tab and click the "Check Now..." button. Confirm that you want to check your hard drive after the next reboot. After you do this for ALL your hard drives, go ahead and reboot your computer. All your drives will then be checked for errors and if any are found, will fix them automatically. Note that this can be rather time intensive. So be patient and maybe go get a snack and favorite beverage while you wait...

Step Four: Clean your browser cache

Using your Internet browser, especially on broadband, is the leading cause of putting temporary files on your computer that will fill up it's free space and slow your computer response down. Before you do anything, make sure you know everything you need such as logins and passwords, and make sure you've bookmarked your most heavily used URLs, etc. In the next few steps, you'll be clearing your browser history and cache since most of it is not needed. Just make sure you're ready before you begin. If you make a mistake, well, you did backup your computer before you began, didn't you?

Close all other applications, and open Internet Explorer. Select the "Tools" > "Internet Options..." menu option. Inside the "Temporary Internet Files" box, click on the "Delete Cookies" button, and the "Delete Files" button. This will clear your browser cookies and cache. Next, the inside the "History" box, click on the "Clear History" button. This will clear the history of all website pages you've ever viewed.

Other browsers should have similar menu options and settings to clear their histories and caches. You should clear them as well in addition to Internet Explorer.

Step Five: Update your anti-virus files

This step doesn't actually improve your computer performance directly, but sets up your computer to prevent viruses, adware, spyware, trojan horses, and other forms of malware (malicious software) from infecting your computer and impairing it's performance and/or stability.

Using your anti-virus and anti-spyware software menu options, update your virus and spyware definition files manually, then set them up to automatically update on a daily basis. Finally, perform a full scan on all of your computer's hard drives.

If you don't have any anti-virus or anti-spyware software, some free effective packages you can download are described in another article.

Step Six: Defragment your hard drives

This may sound silly, but over time hard drives start slowing down in their performance simply because the files are scattered all over the disk. Not just files relative to each other, but even the very sectors of the same file! As you can imagine, this wears out the poor hard drive motor over time as well as slow down it's performance. You'll be doing your hard drive (and yourself) a big favor by defragmenting at least once a month.

Inside Windows Explorer, right click on each hard drive (e.g. C:) and click on the "Properties" button. Then select the "Tools" tab, and click on the "Defragment Now..." button. This can take some time the first time it's done if your hard drive is extremely fragmented, but should go faster on each subsequent run.

Conclusion

Performing these steps routinely, at least monthly, will help your computer run and respond more quickly and keep your hard drive from getting full. Of course, these steps do not clear out software application specific temporary files, usage tracks, or the Windows registry.

This is where Evidence Eliminator can play an important role in the process of caring for your computer. Not only will it secure your privacy, but with regular use will keep your computer running faster, running more stable, and can be run at the click of a mouse, or automatically every time your computer shuts down.

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