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Maintaining Your Drive
& Safeguarding Your Data
A hard drive is a very sophisticated and sensitive device that
requires proper care and maintenance to ensure the longest
possible life, reliable operation, and the integrity of your
stored data.
Backing Up Your Data
The single most important action you can take to safeguard
your valuable data is to backup the data to another stor-
age device. You should backup your data on a regular basis
using a quality data backup utility.
Defragmenting and
Optimizing a Hard Drive
When data is saved to a new drive, it is written to disk in
contiguous clusters. As old files are erased, clusters that
were previously occupied become available for new data.
However, there may not be enough space for the drive to
write a new file in a contiguous set of clusters. The drive
uses the clusters it can, and if more are needed, the drive
uses other clusters in other locations. The result is a frag-
mented file that is scattered in several places on the disk
Over time, the data on the drive becomes increasingly frag-
mented, which can reduce performance.
We recommend using defragmentation and optimization
software to maximize the storage efficiency and optimize
the performance of your hard drive. Optimization software
re-organizes files so that the files you use most often can be
accessed more quickly. Defragmentation software consoli-
Summary of Contents for Enclosure
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