“Renew Your Hard Drive: Here are
Simple and Easy Ways to Cleanup your Hard Drive”By Steven Presar
You know that a regularly scheduled simple maintenance may help keep your computer in shape. There are plenty of third-party programs to help you keep your computer in peak form.
However, Microsoft Windows provides you with a solid toolbox of built-in programs to help you keep your computer in shape. Check out Windows START menu, through PROGRAMS area, then ACCESSORIES, will reveal a group of computer hard-drive helpers called SYSTEM TOOLS.
Backing Your Computer Files
One of System Tools is Backup program. Backup may not be part of your default Windows installations. If is not installed on your computer system, it may be found and installed from your Windows system CD-ROM.
Although it will not recover personal files like email or spreadsheets, Microsoft Windows SYSTEM RESTORE tool may restore files for individuals who have accidentally delete vital system files or tinker so much that their computers fail to operate properly. Windows Restore creates a series of backup points at regular intervals that user can roll back to in an emergency.
Backing up your computer's data on a regular bases, including bookmarks, e-mail folders and personal documents, is an important task if you want peace of mind about your computer system.
Once you start Backup program, click on files you want to copy -- or pick one of other options Windows offers, including backing up all of your files -- and then choose where you want to save files. If you lose a file, you can also restore it from Backup program.
Your computer system can be backed up by a variety of other devices: this may be an external tape, CDs, anther hard drive or removable-cartridge drives like Iomega Peerless. Regardless of what method you use, making a backup of your files that matter most can save you aggravation or despair in event that something happens to your computer.
Cleaning Your Computer Hard Drive
Once you have backed up your important system files, you should delete files that you no longer use.
Windows users can remove old unused software with Add/Remove Programs function (from START menu, then SETTINGS, then CONTROL PANEL). Or you may use commercial software to safely remove old software.
Commercial utility software will not only uninstall old programs but can also clean up unintentional clutter around your hard drive. Temporary files, bits of previously viewed Web pages, disconnected shortcuts, browser-history files and other digital detritus hog space that you can safely reclaim.
The Windows DISK CLEANUP tool in System Tools menu does a good job deleting unneeded files, but commercial utility software like LIUtilities’ WinBackup, Norton CleanSweep or McAfee QuickClean may do a more thorough job.
Checking Your Computer System
If you have ever suffered a crash while working in Windows, you are probably acquainted with ScanDisk. The ScanDisk utility is run after an “unscheduled” computer system interruption. It checks hard drive for file system errors, cross-linked files and other problems. ScanDisk can do a lot more to your hard drive. It can seek out and find bad spots on drive where data cannot safely be stored, and then prevent Windows from using damaged space and possibly losing data.
ScanDisk is standard with all recent Microsoft Windows operating systems. ScanDisk may appear automatically in times of your computers failure. It may also be launched from your System Tools menu (unless you use Windows XP). ScanDisk offers two testing options: Standard and Thorough. The Standard test checks for file and folder errors, and checks hard drive's surface as well. If you choose check Automatically Fix Errors option, you may want to find something else to do while ScanDisk does its job. It takes a while to run fix options.
