If you’re like me, you use your computer a lot. I use mine daily and I’m constantly adding files and deleting files and moving files. I’m not always aware that there is so much being done to files on my computer. I mean, I mostly surf the net. But there are, in fact, many file operations taking place when you surf the net. New files are added and old ones are deleted. In addition to casual browsing, I download files to work on, I delete old files, create new files when I start new projects and I move movies and television to and from my external hard drive. The hard drive in my computer takes a beating, constantly reading from and writing to the disk. This is where the problem of fragmented hard drives comes from.

Hard drives become fragmented the more you use them, it’s inevitable. Operating systems are getting better at preventing this but that doesn’t mean we should stop maintaining our computers altogether. From time to time we need to make sure our hard drives get ‘defragged’. Defragging is when a computer rearranges files on a hard drive to consolidate space. The less space your files take up, the faster your computer can find the files.

This week, I suggest you take some time to defrag your hard drive to keep it running fresh all summer long. Here’s how:

Mac OS: File defragment is done automatically while your work. There is little to no need to run a disk defragmenter. If you would like to run one, just to be safe, I recommend “Disk Warrior” or “iDefrag”.

Windows Vista/7: Press the “Windows Key” and type “Disk Defragmenter”. Press “Enter”. Choose the hard drive you want to defragment (most likely the C: drive) and then press “Defragment Disk”. Let this run (depending on the size of your hard drive, this could take hours) and when it’s done your hard drive will be defragged. It’s also a good idea to turn on the “Scheduled Defragmentation” and set it to a time you know your computer will be turned on each week.

Windows XP: There is no scheduled defragment in Windows XP. To defrag, open “My Computer” and right-click on the hard drive you would like to defrag. Choose “Properties” and navigate to “Tools”. Click “Defragment Now” to open the defragment utility. Finally click “Defragment”. Let it run (depending on the size of your hard drive, this could take hours).