Windows 7 / Getting Started

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Performing disk management

You can access the Disk Management console in a number of ways. The easiest method is to open the Computer Management console. You'll find the Disk Management functionality in the Computer Management\Storage\ Disk Management folder. If you want to preserve a little screen real estate, you can also open the Disk Management console using the DiskMgmt.MSC file. No matter which way you open it, you see a listing of the drives on your system.

The main display shows the status of each of the drives on your system. The display includes flash drives, the hard drive, and CD/DVD drives. You won't see floppy drives listed. The top of the displays shows the status of each drive and includes information such as the amount of free disk space and the file system.

Whenever you click one of the drive entries in the upper display, you see it selected in the lower display. This lower display shows the physical media on which the drives exist. A single hard drive can contain multiple volumes, each of which appears as a drive to Windows. The physical media display also shows any free space that you can use for other purposes.

The basic management tasks appear as icons in the toolbar. You can use these icons to display the console tree, obtain help, and display the Actions pane. In addition, you can refresh the display, see the selected drive properties, open the drive, or explore the drive. Finally, you can display the Settings dialog box, which is used to configure the Disk Management console appearance.

If you want to see the advanced management tasks you can perform with a particular drive, right-click its entry. The context menu contains a list of the tasks you can perform, which includes formatting the drive, setting its partition as active, changing the drive letter, extending the volume, shrinking the volume, or deleting the volume altogether. If you have the correct hardware, you can also mirror the drives to provide fault tolerance.

Defragmenting the hard drive

All hard drives eventually become fragmented as you use them. Fragmentation is a process where files appear in multiple locations on the hard drive rather than in a single location. A fragmented hard drive doesn't perform as well because the drive heads must move around a lot more to get work done. Defragmenting the hard drive is a process where you move the data around on the hard drive until all the files appear in contiguous clusters, making it possible to access them in a single long read rather than in multiple short reads.

To start the Disk Defragmenter console, choose Start → Programs → Accessories → System Tools → Disk Defragmenter. Disk Defragmenter performs an analysis of your system and tells you whether it can improve performance.

Notice that you can set Disk Defragmenter to run automatically. You can choose a time that's unlikely to bother anyone and run Disk Defragmenter automatically so that your system is always optimized. Simply check the Run On a Schedule option and then configure the time to perform the task.

When you see that the hard drives require defragmentation, click Defragment Now. Disk Defragmenter asks you which disks to defragment. Place a check mark next to each drive that you want to work with and then click OK. At this point, Disk Defragmenter begins its task. You can stop the process at any time by clicking Cancel Defragmentation.

Tip: Some administrators complain about the time required to defragment a hard drive. One way to make defragmentation and virus scans faster is to free up as many machine resources as possible. Close as many open applications as you can, including those that appear in the Notification Area. In addition, sever network and Internet connections when you can. Anything you can do to make the machine work more efficiently speeds up both defragmentation and virus scanning.