How Win8 improves performance by optimizing hard drives

One of the best ways to improve your computer's performance is to optimize your hard drive. The features included in Windows help optimize the various types of drives that computers use today. Regardless of the type of drive your computer uses, Windows automatically chooses the optimal way to fit the drive.

By default, “Optimize Drives" (formerly known as "Disk Defragmenter") will run automatically every week. But you can also manually optimize your computer's drive.

Steps to manually optimize the drive

1. Open “ optimize drive by: swiping from the right edge of the screen to the middle, click “search” (if using the mouse) , point to the top right corner of the screen, then move the pointer down, click “search”), enter defragmentation in the search box, and then click or click “set” and“ Drive defragmentation and optimization”.

2. Under "Status", click or click the drive you want to optimize. (“media type” column shows the optimized drive type.)

3. To determine if you need to optimize the drive, tap or click “Analysis”. You may be asked to provide an administrator password or confirm your choice.

When Windows has finished analyzing the drive, check the “current status&colquo; column to see if you need to optimize the drive. If the drive's fragmentation ratio exceeds 10%, you should optimize the drive immediately.

4. Click or click “Optimize”. You may be asked to provide an administrator password or confirm your choice.

Drive optimization can occur anywhere, from minutes to hours, depending on the size of the drive and the degree of optimization required. The computer can still be used during the optimization process.

Note:

If the drive is being used by another program or is formatted using a file system other than NTFS, FAT, or FAT32, the drive cannot be optimized.

Network drives cannot be optimized.

If the drive does not appear in "Optimize Drives", it may be due to an error in the drive. Please try to fix the drive first, then return to “optimize the drive> retry. For more information, see "Steps to Fix Drives" at the end of this article.

Steps to change the optimization plan

1. Open “ optimize drive by: swiping from the right edge of the screen to the middle, click “search” (if using the mouse) , point to the top right corner of the screen, then move the pointer down, click “search”), enter defragmentation in the search box, and then click or click “set” and“ Drive defragmentation and optimization”.

2. Click or click “Change Settings”. You may be asked to provide an administrator password or confirm your choice.

3. Do one of the following:

To turn off plan optimization, clear the “Run as scheduled check box. 8008net.com

To change the frequency of the program optimization, click on the “Frequency” button or click the drop-down list, and then click or click “Daily”, “Daily” ” or "monthly”. The default optimization plan is run weekly during <automatic maintenance".

To select drives to be included in or excluded from program optimization, click or click “select” next to “drive> to check or clear the check next to the drive Box, then click or click “OK”. If you don't want the new drive to be added to the plan optimization, you can also clear the "Automatically optimize new drive" checkbox. If Windows cannot optimize a drive, it does not use this drive as an option to “automatic maintenance”.

4. Click or click “OK”.

Steps to Repair the Drive

1. Open “Computer" by swiping from the right edge of the screen to the middle and clicking "Search” (if using the mouse) Point to the top right corner of the screen, then move the pointer down, click “search”), enter the computer in the search box, and then click or click "Application" & " Computer".

2. Press and hold down or right-click on the drive you want to repair, then tap or click “Properties”.

3. Click or click the <;Tools> tab, then under “Error Check", click or click “Check”. You may be asked to provide an administrator password or confirm your choice.

4. Follow the instructions. You may need to restart your computer after the error check is complete.