I have heard about “defragmentation”, which I understands helps to keep your disk space organised. We have had our PC for nearly two years and was wondering if we should do “Defragmentation”. We use Windows 98 so is this something we should do as part of ‘house-keeping’ and does it have any adverse effects on other files on the PC. How long should defragmenting take? We have had no problems with our PC to date. It is a Intel Celeron 333, 3GB Hd, 64MB.

Normally on a disk drive the files and folders are scattered and fragmented over the volume which means that it takes longer to access a file or folder. When you defragment a drive, all of the scattered pieces of files and folders are brought together into one area so that Windows can access the file or folder faster. I suggest that you do perform defragmentation regularly if you would like faster access to your files and folders. However, be warned that sometimes it does take a long time to complete. D. Huang also asks about defragmentation in his question below. He comments that his computer takes 6 hours and then the process is 40% complete! For some other people it only takes 1 hour to complete. Really, the only way to find out how long it will take is to try it as it differs from computer to computer. If you do decide to defragment regularly this should have no adverse effect on your computer as it is simply organising the data on your disk.