Computer Optimization, Part II – Digital Hoarding
In the previous section, we discussed the concepts behind computer optimization and hard drive fragmentation. After fragmentation, the next issue to discuss about how hard drives slow down our computers is the increasing volume of data being stored on them.
If you’ve seen a phonograph turntable, you have a rough notion of how a hard drive operates, but imagine it spinning much faster. Instead of 33 or 45 revolutions per minute, hard drives operate at 5,400, 7,200, 10,000, or even 15,000 revolutions per minute. For even the slowest hard drive to spin around to the complete opposite side of the disk may take under 1/100th of a second, but like a phonograph turntable, rotation isn’t the only motion the drive makes; the head also moves in and out, radially, and that motion is significantly slower. When a hard drive has little data on it, that data is generally stored close to the center, so the head only needs to traverse a tiny fraction of the radius of the disk, but as more and more data get stored, more of the radius of the disk is used, so the portion of the radius that the head must travel gets longer, making data reads and writes slower.
Fortunately, this type of performance degradation can frequently be mitigated against, too. People tend to be terrible pack-rats about what they store on their computers. Hard drives become like black holes, collecting years of data that may never be used, needed, or even seen again. If the computer was faster when it was new, before you had all this data on it, you may well be able to restore it to that level of performance if you could clean out some of this data. There are countless ways to identify and remove unneeded data from a hard drive. Windows comes with a few tools that may help:
- Disk Cleanup searches for several categories of junk left on your drive and enables you to remove them.
- Add or Remove Programs helps you find and remove old applications and Windows Components that you no longer use or need.
Even your own old documents, music, movies, and photos can be parsed and either deleted or moved into offline storage (such as burned to CDs/DVDs or uploaded to network or even Internet storage facilities).
In extreme situations, you can also reduce some of the cache sizes, such as the System Restore cache size or even the Recycle Bin. By default, these take up 12% and 10% of your hard drive, respectively, and unless you’re prone to deleting things you shouldn’t have, cutting these in half frees up 1/9 of your hard drive, immediately and without undue risk.
Professionals may also be able to help you identify more ways of freeing up space, such as disabling Offline Files if the feature isn’t needed, deleting old user profiles, removing old printers, reducing Internet cache settings, etc. Frequently, programs leave remnants of themselves behind on your hard drive, even after being uninstalled; these may also be deleted. Misconfigured virtual memory settings may also hog up more of your hard drive that is actually needed.
Many people are comfortable enough with removing or offloading old applications and data files, but if you’d prefer to leave it to a professional, Maverick Solutions would be happy to help. In fact, for our loyal blog readers, we’re even offering a Free PC Tune-Up.
Tune in next time when we discuss a little problem I like to call Application Creep.
