Has your computer been running sluggish lately? Take a look at your hard drive space and you might find the reason the old laptop doesn’t run like she used to. If your drive is near filling its capacity, there’s a good chance it’s slowing your computer down.
When a computer program runs it creates temporary files to store data being used. The less space a computer has to create these files, the harder it is for programs to find space to store its temporary files. If space is scare, it’s likely that these temporary files will be fragmented (broken up and save on different parts of the hard drive). The more fragmented a file is, the longer it will take to access it.
If you have an external hard drive, consider transferring your files to it to free up space on your hard drive. You may also want to run a Disk Cleanup (Windows: open My Computer, right-click on your hard drive and choose “Properties”, the box opened will have a disk cleanup option; Mac: Disk Inventory X is free and will help find unneeded files (http://www.derlien.com/)). The goal is to have at least 10% of your hard drive free, though a little more never hurt anyone.
After you free up hard drive space, it’s a good idea to run a defragment. See the June 3rd Tech Tip on defragging.