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| Defragment |
To check your harddrive(s) for physical problems using 'Chkdsk' it is usually necessary to 'defragment' your harddrive first.
As a hardrive fills up with differently sized chunks of data, the individual files of newly installed software can end up being
spread around many different sections of free memory.
Defragmenting reorganises all of your software and files back into neatly arranged contiguous sections of the drive. This cuts down
the time it takes for software to access and run all of its various files because they're all in the same area of the drive.
On extremely fragmented drives there will be noticeable jumps and hiccups as more recently installed software runs.
You will need to make enough free space, usually 15% (e.g. about 12Gb on a 80Gb drive), for the defragmentation process to start.
If the defragmentation process reaches a certain point and then starts again from the beginning at 0% it is because it is trying to move
a file that is currently in use. Try closing all open windows and switching off any programs you're running.
If it still restarts to 0% try booting into Safe Mode and run defragmenter from there.
After defragmenting your harddrives it is usually necessary to defragment again, sometimes several times, until the drive is completely unfragmented.
Very large installations, like games & movies, require an equally large amount of memory space (which can include free drive space) in which to hold the entire installation while it defrags enough contiguous space in which to slot it. Therefore the more free space you have on the drive to start with the easier it is to fully defragment the drive and gain the benefit of an improvement in drive read speed.
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