NWA-PCUG 09/2000 NewsLetter Article 18861 N. Hwy 112, Springdale, AR 72762-9303 Tip: Disk Fragmentation by Robert E. Simanski, CPCUG From 5/99 CPCUG Monitor I wanted to share an interesting experience I had recently that demonstrates the importance of unfragmenting your hard drives periodically. I used to be almost fanatical about unfragmenting files back in the days of the original PC and the 286, when unfragmenting a drive made a noticeable improvement in performance. However, I must admit that in the past few years, as drives became faster and bigger, I had fallen into the trap of believing that it wasn't as important as before. I got a rude awakening when I installed a CD-ROM writer. I ran the system tests that came with the software and found that my C and D drives were each producing transfer rates of only about 650 kbytes/sec. This was barely more than the speed at which the CD-ROM writer could write files to the CD-ROM at its top (4x) speed. It was so bad that the test software determined that my system wasn't fast enough to support a 4x writing speed and dropped the default to 2x! I knew that the drives seemed to be running slower than when they were new, but I assumed this was because of the large number of programs I had installed in Windows 95. Nevertheless, I took the testing software's suggestion of unfragmenting the drives -- something I had last done a month or two ago. I used the Nuts & Bolts Disk Tune utility, which is much more configurable than the Windows 95 Disk Defragmenter, and seemingly faster as well. Disk Tune allows you to sort directories and decide what types of files get placed close to the outer edge of the drive, where they can be accessed very quickly. The results were amazing. When I ran the tests again, the transfer rates went from 650 kbytes/sec for both large and small files to 2048 kbytes/sec for small files and 3072 kbytes/sec for large files. This represented an improvement of between 300 and 500 percent, and made it possible for me to write CD-ROMs at 4x speed. More importantly, Windows itself, as well as programs and files, loaded much faster than before. Robert E. Simanski, ABC, of Herndon, Virginia, has been a member of the Capital PC User Group since 1987 and a professional writer and editor for more than 30 years. He is the owner of Your Publications Pro!, a business that offers publications, Web site, and computer consulting and troubleshooting services. Bob may be reached by phone at (703) 481-6776 or by e-mail at rsimanski@mindspring.com