 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Handy hints for hard disk housekeeping John Collins |
My first wife always said that housekeeping was an unrewarding task, as soon as you finished, someone came along and mucked it up again. How do you respond to a remark like that? Particularly, when the subject is hard disk housekeeping? My response is, "Yes, hard disk housekeeping appears unrewarding, until you think about what happens if you don't do it. Good housekeeping on your hard disk is like preventive maintenance, it can help prevent or reduce the severity of a computer disaster. It might be dull but it is essential."
Spring cleaning
Hard disks are like storage cupboards, the more cupboards you have the more junk you collect. There is a series of Murphy's laws for hard disks. One of them says that irrespective of the disk's nominal size, a hard disk will always be 95 per cent full. It was true when I had a 10 MB disk and it would still be true now, with my 1.2 gigabyte disk, if I wasn't a vigilant hard disk housekeeper.
Note: as a general rule, keep your disk less than 65 per cent full, more than that courts disaster.
Here are some typical problems that can be solved with a good spring cleaning.
Files on your hard disk that should not be there
Cleaning out the clutter that accumulates on your hard disk is an essential part of managing your computer's storage. You need to examine the clutter that has accumulated since you last looked, then clean it up and clear it out.
File Allocation Table problems
At the risk of sounding technical, let's look at how your computer keeps track of where and how it a file is stored on your hard disk (or any disk). When you save a file, your computer begins the process by looking for free space on the disk. It carefully writes down the location of the first available space and starts storing the information. If the file doesn't all fit in the space available, it notes the ending location of the file and searches for the next available space on the disk, first linking the previous location with the next. It notes the location of that disk space and starts putting the remaining portion of the file into that space. It repeats this process until it's stored the file - in as many different locations as it takes.
If it's been a while since you've done any hard disk housekeeping, it might need to split your file into a number of different locations. The exact location of each part of every file on your disk is recorded in a special part of the disk, called a File Allocation Table (FAT).
Because this file is essential to accurate data retrieval, there are actually two copies of the File Allocation Table. If one is destroyed, there's another for it to fall back on. If the two FATs differ, the disk does the best it can. Sometimes this is okay, but sometimes you'll just get garbage back when you try to retrieve a file.
If one of the copies of your FAT becomes too badly damaged, the disk reads the other one. When both become damaged...yep, you're right. You've got a dead disk. Physically it is fine, but it is brain dead. All your programs are still there along with your data, but the map that tells the computer how to put everything back together again - in a meaningful way - is lost.
Your hard disk slows to a crawl
It doesn't matter how fast your microprocessor is, if your computer has to go searching in 100 different spots to collect the bits and pieces of a file, it's going to slow you down. When you notice your formerly speedy hard disk getting sluggish - when it's slow to respond to a command to load a program or retrieve a file - it's a signal that your hard disk needs a good clean up.
But, here's the rub. This usually happens so gradually that you don't notice it, until the disk has slowed alarmingly. You can see the disk light blinking frantically - so you know something is happening inside. You can often hear the little man who lives in the hard disk running around, but nothing is happening on the screen.
One of the reasons this happens is hard disk clutter (the first problem aboce). Your hard disk is so cluttered and the file is so fragmented that the computer has to constantly refer to the File Allocation Table to find the next location on the disk from which it will collect information.
It then has to search the disk for the next segment, and the next and the next, each time going back to the FAT to find the next segment it needs to collect.
What are the solutions?
You need the help of both a file management program and a utilities program. No SOHO operator should be without these important aids. I admit my biases. I am a Norton man. Norton Commander and Norton Utilities will help you do all of the tasks below. If you prefer another set of programs, then go for them. It is a waste of time arguing which is better. Windows has a File Manager. For a utilities program, my son-in-law swears by XTree Gold as a file manager, others swear just as hard by PCTools. DOS 6.x has a number of utilities incorporated in its suite of programs. Choose whichever you like, but you certainly need one or more of them to do your housekeeping with ease.
Here are some tasks all good disk housekeepers should perform regularly
Get rid of files you don't need.
If you don't need it, delete it. Be ruthless. Use your file manager to look at all data files. Using your file manager, go through your directories one at a time. Read data files and decide which files you need and don't need.
Is your word processor set up to make an automatic backup each time you save a document? You can recognise them by their file names and extensions, they will look like this FILENAME.BK! or perhaps FILENAME.BAK. Check that you have the final version of the file, then delete the backup.
Check the creation and modification dates on each file. If it's been more than a year since the file was modified, ask yourself, "Do I really need it on my hard disk? Is it still essential?" (Note: Don't use this rule to select program or system files to chuck, that would be a disaster of world-class magnitude). If you don't need it on your hard disk, but you do want to save it, transfer it to a properly labelled floppy disk and save it there. Then delete it from the hard disk. Do you really need that thank you letter to the host of a dinner held months ago? If you do, keep it, if not delete it. Before you start this process, establish a policy on what you are going to keep and where you are going to keep it.
What about those files you aren't sure about? My advice is, delete them. If you aren't as ruthless as I am, transfer them to a carefully labelled floppy disk. But get them off your hard drive.
What about old program files, like the word processor program you used three years ago? You know the one I mean, the one that has long been superseded by your top-of-the-line model. You've still got the original disks, haven't you? Then remove the program from your hard disk. If you really want to take a walk down computing's memory lane, you can reinstall it. If you no longer have the original disks, copy the program files to floppies (use a file compression program to cut down on numbers) and then take it off your hard drive. I know, it's hard to delete old friends. Be strong. Just do it!
Ensure your FATs are healthy FATs
I feel strongly about this. I have had two hard disks go down. The first went when I was warned that one of the FATs was corrupted but the other was still okay. Fool that I was, I did nothing, until eventually I had a brain-dead hard disk.
Since then I have bought Norton Utilities and built Norton Disk Doctor into my computers' AUTOEXEC.BAT files. Every time our computers boot we do a quick disk scan and if any faults are found, they are corrected.
It is possible to recover from many disk problems. You can set up Norton Disk Doctor to check the partition table, the DOS boot record, the File Allocation Tables, the directory structure, the file structure and to search for lost clusters (bits of files that have been lost in the file allocation process) - all automatically.
It will then ask you if you want the problem fixed. After having to ask the Doctor to do a fix fairly often, I am now convinced that the time taken to scan the disk is time well spent. How much time? Total time for the quick scan of our 1.2 Gigabyte hard drive, a whopping 15 seconds. If there are problems, just a little longer fix them. No time at all really, when you compare it to having to sort out a problem later.
Fragmentation / Defragmentation
Fragmented files are those files stored in several parts all over your hard disk. How to you undo this problem? Simple, with a reversing process called defragmentation. In Norton it is called Speed Disk, in DOS 6.x it is DEFRAG, but they are just different names for similar processes. Both ask you similar questions about what you want done, both offer you alternatives, depending on how fragmented the disk is. Until you become skilled in the process, I suggest you accept the program's advice on the method of defragmentation to be used.
The program works its way through the disk, rearranging your files until each is stored in a continuous run on the disk. Next time you call for a program or file you'll be delighted at the speed of retrieval.
Good housekeeping!
Reprinted from the July 1996 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
