how to scan and fix a hard drive free

The minute your computer’s hard drive starts to act slowly, make sure you have an up-to-date backup. Then you do some diagnostics and repairs. Windows and Mac OS come with built-in hard drive utility software that scans your hard disk for errors and attempts to fix them.

How to scan and fix a hard drive?

1. Click My Computer.
2. Right-click a hard drive you want to scan and fix; select Properties.
3. Select the Tools Tab and click Check Now.
4. At the Check Disk menu, click both options (“Automatically fix file system errors” and “Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors”).
5. Click Start.

A message will ask you if you want to schedule a disk check, click Yes.

1. Close all open menus and programs.
2. Restart your computer.

Windows will run the CHKDSK utility and open your desktop when it has finished.

It may take an hour or two to do this test, so do not perform this test when you have insufficient time. It’s a good idea to check your hard drive once a month, keeping your system running well, finding and fixing errors in the file allocation table, the file system structure and the directory tree structure.

You should also regularly defragment your hard drive to keep your system running well. In the course of normal usage, files are constantly changed and written or rewritten to the hard drive. The file system tries to pack the files tightly, but they are not all the same size, so it breaks them into pieces to fit where it finds space for them. Over time these pieces get scattered all over the drive. It begins to take a lot of time to read and write files, slowing down your computer performance.

But Disk Defragmenter reorganizes the files on your hard disk into contiguous blocks. This improves the performance of your programs because the files are arranged closer together. Disk Defragmenter also creates a log file to determine which programs you run most frequently. All such frequently used files are then placed in a single location on your hard disk, which further reduces the time needed to start those programs.

How to use Disk Defragmenter to keep hard drive in good condition?

1. Double Click MY Computer
2. Right Click Local Drive C
3. Click on Properties.
4. Click Tools.
5. Click Defragment Now..
6. Click Analyze

How do I Free up Hard Disk Space

A full hard drive or almost full hard disk will lead to all kinds of problems such as hard to write data to the system files, hard to rearrange files, hard to find data, hard to run system maintenance functions etc.. Computer needs a degree of free hard disk space to function properly. And free up hard disk space will effectively speed up your PC, especially the hard drive is getting close to its capacity.

The easiest way to free up hard disk space is touninstall unused programs.

• Click Start-Control Panel.
• Select and double click Add or Remove programs.
• Choose from the list of programs and software you intend to uninstall by clicking and selecting Remove.

The second way of freeing up hard disk space is to remove files which you do not need. These files include:

• Unused programs and applications
• Large multimedia files you have forgotten about
• Files you seldom access which can be stored elsewhere
• Temporary operating system files that can be deleted
• Internet browsing related files
• Emails you haven’t bothered to delete
• Old installation files you don’t need anymore
• Windows components you don’t use
• Files in Recycle Bin
• The list goes on and on and on . . . . .

To delete these unneeded files, you can use Disk Cleanup to analyze your hard drive to look for them and safely delete them.

• Click Start-All Programs-Accessories-System Tools
• Select Disk Cleanup
• Select the hard disk you want to clean up in Select Drive dialog box and click Ok

You need to wait while Disk Cleanup calculates how much space you are able to clean up.

The third way to free up hard disk space is to use Disk Defragmenter which can consolidate fragmented files on PC’s hard disk.

• Click Start-All Programs-System Tools.
• Select Disk Defragmenter.
• Click Continue when a window prompts you to go through with the operation
• Click Defragment Now.

The fourth way of freeing up hard disk space is to use System Restore which will create recovery disks. But System Restore allocates up to 15% of hard disk space to a Shadow Copy, or Volume Snapshot Device. So we should find the current allocation of disk space for the Shadow Copy and reduce the Shadow Copy.

• Click Start-All Programs-Accessories.
• Right-click on Command Prompt and select Run as administrator.
• Type in: vssadmin list shadowstorage.

Through above four methods, you can troubleshoot a lack of hard disk space and your computer will perform to the max.

How to Analyze and Defragment Your Hard Disk

Over time, files and applications are scattered in various places on your hard disk. It’s fragmented which makes your hard disk do extra work, slowing down your computer. So, we need Disk Defragmenter to rearrange fragmented data, which brings those scattered pieces together to help your disks and drives work more efficiently. Disk Defragmenter runs on a schedule, but you can analyze and defragment your disks and drives manually.

Analyzing and defragmenting hard disks will help to preserve the performance and general operation of your computer.

Defragmenting a disk volume can take a long time which depends on the size of the volume, the number of files, the percentage of fragmentation, and the availability of system resources. So, you should firstly analyze volumes before defragmenting them, then decide whether to take the time to run the defragmentation process. Analyzing and defragmenting a hard disk is an easy task. The following instructions will show you how to analyze and defragment hard disk in Windows XP.

Analyze fragmented files and folders on a hard disk.

1. Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, point to System Tools, and then click Disk Defragmenter.
2. Click the volume that you want to analyze.
3. Click Analyze to begin the analysis.
4. Review the results of the analysis after it is complete by clicking View Report. If the analysis tool recommends that the volume be defragmented, follow the next steps.

Defragment a hard disk.

1. Click Defragment to begin the operation.
2. Review the progress of the operation in the Defragmentation Display window. Fragmented files on the disk appear in red, contiguous files are blue, and system files are green. Our goal is to eliminate most of the red in the window.

You can also access Disk Defragmenter as below.

1. Click on “My Computer” to view all drives
2. Right-Click Local Disk you want to defragment and choose “Properties”
3. At Choose “Tools”tab, choose to click the “Defragment Now” button. Disk Defragmenter will show up.

After defragmenting your hard disks, you will feel your computer response faster and smoother when you launch an application or open a file or surf the Internet because programs and files will tend to store in one general area and many Internet files are removed. Windows built-in defragmentation program will keep your hard disk in top shape. I suggest you give your hard disk a regular defragmentation clean every 2-4 weeks.

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