Free Space
The C: Disc drive should NEVER be more
than 70% full. Even between 50% and 70% full is unhealthy. I know that this means
lots of wasted gigabytes, but that is a price you need to pay for good response
times. Anyway, Disc drives are cheap – much cheaper than buying a new computer.
Here are the Free Space guidelines:
- 15% Free Space is needed for the Disk Defragmenter to run
- 30% Free Space is the minimum for reasonable response times
- 50% Free Space provides optimal performance.
In Windows Explorer, right click the "C:" Disc drive. Then click Properties. You
will see a colourful pie graph that will quickly show how full the drive is.
If you have multiple RAID Disk drives, the Free Space guidelines can be relaxed.
Remove
Junk files
On the same tab, you will see a button "Disc Cleanup". Click it, and it will calculate
how much junk can be deleted. This will include Internet files like Cookies (you
can easily accumulate a megabyte each time you access the Internet), Temporary files,
Setup files, the Recycle bin, etc.
There is not much to gain from Compressing old files. There will be little improvement
in the available free disk space, and the compressed files will be slower to open.
Any space saved will come from text-based files, but the real space hoggers like
music and video files, are usually already compressed. Use the compress option if
the files are large, seldom used, and on a separate Disc drive.
Click the "OK" button to remove the Junk files.
Search
for Old Files
Do a search using Windows Explorer's search facility, of all files (use *.*) which
are more than 2 years old. Delete most of them – you have not used them for
2 years! Warning – delete your own files, not system files.
All deleted files are sent to the Recycle bin – you can recover any file inadvertently
deleted. Wait a few weeks before emptying your Recycle bin.
Search
for Large Files
Do a search using Windows Explorer again, listing all files of more than say 1,000
kilobytes. Keep only the ones that you really, really do want online. Those files
that you do not want immediate access to, and which are more than 2 years old, should
be stored offline to a CD. To sort the files in Date order, click the "Modified"
column.
One culprit is often Outlook.pst – where your Outlook emails are stored. You
may need to delete the attachments to messages – pretty pictures and videos
can be several megabytes in size. When you have finished the deletions, you will
need to compact Outlook.pst – otherwise it will stay the same size. When in
Outlook, select File/Data File Management/Settings and click "Compact Now".
Delete
system log files
Do a search for all "*.log" files. If you have logging enabled, these files can
accumulate quickly.
Delete
Temporary Files
Use Windows Explorer to open the folder C:\Windows\Temp. The files in this folder
can accumulate quickly. Delete all files older than one week.
Buy
another Disc Drive
You will get much better throughput from two Disc drives. The advantages are:
- It increases the free space on your C: drive.
- It allows you to split the files logically into system and user files.
- It allows simultaneous access to both Disc drives, providing better throughput.
- When upgrading to a new operating system, there is less chance that your personal
files will be lost.
Think about buying a new solid-state drive (SSD). These drives are beginning to
drop in price and can improve response times dramatically.
Whatever you do, don't be talked into a single large Disc drive instead of two smaller
Disc drives. There is also little throughput advantage in having three or more Disc
drives – unless they are RAID drives.
Remove
unused Programs
Use the "Add-Remove Programs" routine to see what programs have been installed on
your system (you will find it in Start/Settings/Control Panel). Then uninstall any
software no longer in use.
File relating to the uninstalled program frequently remain, so open the Program
Files folder and search for the uninstalled Program name, and delete the folder
and contents. But make sure that program has been uninstalled before any deletions
with Windows Explorer.
Defragmentation
is essential
After a while, the data files that reside on a Disc drive get spread further and
further from the centre of the Disc. The files that reside furthest will have slow
access times – up to 10 times slower than a well placed file. Also, files
are frequently split into smaller parcels (extents in computer jargon) to allow
them to slot into the available, scattered free space. The time to access 100 or
more extents will be slow.
You can defragment your Disc drive manually. Right Click the "C:" drive, select
Properties/Tools then click the button "Defragment Now".
My Vista computer is a powerful 64 bit processor with 4 GB of memory. On Upgrading
to Windows 7, I thought that the computer would be blindingly fast. Instead it was
very, very slow. I checked on disc usage, and found that temporary folders remained
- namely $Windows and $INPLACE. These were soon deleted and the Recycle bin cleared.
I then defragmented the C: disc drive. And for good measure, I defragmented the
drive once again. And voila! Response times improved dramatically.
Regular
Maintenance:
The suggested Disc maintenance steps should be carried out regularly. You will be
amazed at the difference to your computer. Response times will return to that of
a new PC (almost!).
Seek
Time
The Seek Time of a hard disk is the amount of time required for the read/write heads
to move between the tracks of a disk. Disc Seek Time is one of the most important
performance indicators. Even a small reduction in the seek time can result in a
large overall system performance improvement.
The Seek Time is shown in milliseconds. Here comparisons of the average seek times
for disc drives:
|
Ancient disc drives
|
35 ms
|
|
Older disc drives
|
20 ms
|
|
IDE/ATA drives
|
8 - 10 ms
|
|
SCSI drives
|
4 ms
|
|
SSD drives
|
0 ms
|
The actual Seek Time for accessing files depend upon how scattered the files are,
and how close the files are to the centre of the platter. A lightly loaded disc
drive will always perform better than a full disc drive – however well the
files have been defragmented.
Solid
State Disc drives
The faster your hard disc drives are the better will be the performance. For a huge
boost in responsiveness, you need a Solid State Disc (SSD) drive. Everything will
be noticeably faster – all actions will be nearly instantaneous. The computer
will boot faster, install faster, shutdown faster, launch faster.
This is a brand new technology, so proceed with caution. Older versions of Windows
are optimised for hard disk drives – only Windows 7 is optimised for SSDs.
Different read/write performance can cause problems.