HDD Defragmentation - How it works and Why it works!

Many of us have come across the term "De Fragment your Hard for increased speed" or  "you have to De Frag your drive to keep it fast" and even "A full drive makes your computer slower" (a fuller drive worsens fragmentation)

SO WHY DOES IT WORK? - Think about Tetris!... sorta

Our hard drives are Spacious big entities where we dump our Operating system, data, pictures videos and other personal files, each file has a certain size, data is written onto the hard drive in blocks of information, small files take 1 or few blocks, while big and larger file take much many blocks, Have you ever played TETRIS? well, your computer plays Tetris too every time it saves files!

 

Each color represents a file, new big files will be split inside 

those empty spaces! Fragmentation in a nutshell!

New Year Defrag - Get your Disk in top shape!

I feel obligated to give and in-depth guide of what is fragmentation and how De-fragmentation programs work, but for the purpose of finishing  the "New Year's" series of January i will save that for the next post.

Defragmentation ! - Make your drive go zoom zoom!

We hear it all the time, "Defragment your drive to make it faster" and i can assure you this applies to everyone who uses a computer regularly, after many write cycles files get spread all over the drive, so just in time, right after this big New years clean up, its time to sort all and gain back some speed!


There are several Defragmentation programs available, from many brands and with different features, and you might spend hours reading and trying programs to see which one is better, the truth is that each program tackles your information and fragmentation in different ways, so my goal in this post is to recommend a good "all around" program that brings forth a lot of optimizations, ease of use and doesnt take hours to do so.

 this one is quite handy and has a lot of perks to it!

New Year's Check Up - Checking For Viruses and Malware!

Welcome back, if you followed my guide last week, you might be enjoying a somewhat less cluttered and faster system, but its time we get rid of any virus trojan or malware that might be affecting your system!.

What is the best antivirus? - http://www.av-comparatives.org/
Often i come across this question, and there are preferences for every one out there, some people love N0rton or Mkaffee,(i dont like them personally) what i like to do is check out an independent organization called AV-Compares, that tests antivirus programs 3-4 times  a year against a pool of old and new viruses a good antivirus that catches every single threat will tax your syetem making it slow and  and a "light" antivirus might not catch all of them. (on last years tests, Avast was granted the best free antivirus due to its speed and ability to catch a high percentage of threats, but there are better (slower) ones, check Av-compares  often for up to date data.

New Year's Maintenance - usefull windows utilities to keep your system running!

IMPORTANT - software mentioned in this guide is free/shareware and might rely on advertisement such as a t00lbar, or search engine MAKE SURE YOU ONLY INSTALL the programs and AVOID  installing anything else that might come bundled with. make sure you read the install settings!

Lets begin the new year with a clean and fast system!  - without having to reformat!

Its a hassle to keep our computers running fast , a  program here, and a tool bar there, and windows takes minutes to boot, internet browsers takes ages to load and a lot of space has gone missing from our hard disks.

Cleaning the scraps - windows leaves a lot of garbage behind!
Windows loves to open and make temporal files, the internet cache, or a program might need to unpack in order to install, these TEMP folders serve their purpose, but windows rarely cleans up after itself!

CCLEANER - empty temp folders and other garbage

http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner - get it here!
I have been using Ccleaner for a few years and i have found this program to the best overall to get the job done, cleaning up the common dirt and readying your system for the next steps, head over to piriform website on the url up there and download the latest version. theres tools and options but dont fiddle with those for the moment.

 Recommended settings - cookies store your browser passwords you can keep them if you want

A new 2012 for everyone - some more thoughts =)

INTERACTIVE POST  - CLICK AND LISTEN THE VIDEO WHILE YOU READ  THIS POST :D

A new year comes - A new chance for all of us!

The earth has come around the sun once more, our calendars marks change and for the next 365 days we will call this year 2012.