XP5 Pro Chapter Two Pag e 3 of 11
The Windows Explorer provides an alternative way of seeing the contents of the C: drive
(
Start/Programs/Windows Explorer
). See the Windows 95 documentation for more information on
this program.
If you find yourself running short of space on your hard drive and do not want to [XP5 Pro 2.3]
upgrade to a larger drive, you can use a disk compression utility (e.g. the utility that is included with
Windows 95) to store the data in a different form that takes up less space on your hard drive.
Compression may slow your system slightly (since data must be uncompressed and recompressed
during file access), but you may not find the difference to be noticeable. If you do find that the
compression slows down the system more than you would like, you can decompress the drive (as long
as you have not added more files that have made the compressed disk too large to fit back on the
uncompressed disk) and purchase a larger hard drive to swap into the hard drive bay. See the manual
for the disk compression software for instructions on installing and/or uninstalling such software.
[Sidebar: A disk compression utility usually needs some space to allow it to shuffle the data. If you
wait until your disk is full, you may need to delete files to gain enough room for the disk compression
utility to work. You should check your hard drive every so often to see how much space is left.]
Computer disks will often get fragmented. This means that files are not stored in a single piece but are
broken up and distributed. This happens because hard disks are random access devices. When they
seek to save a file to disk, they randomly find the first available space and begin to store the
information. If this space is not large enough to accommodate the whole file, then the computer will
break off the remaining section of the file and find the next available space. And so on. This can result
in files being broken into many small pieces and scattered across the drive. With heavy usage, the drive
can eventually become very fragmented. This can slow access time to the disk. Keep in mind that even
a very fast hard drive is [XP5 Pro 2.4] still much slower than RAM, so slowing the access time to the
disk will slow down what is already one of the slowest elements of your system. You can check
fragmentation level and defragment the disk by using defragmentation software. One example comes
with Windows 95 and can be found in the System menu
(
Start/Programs/Accessories/System
Tools
). A good defragmentation program will usually advise you as to whether or not the disk is
sufficiently fragmented to warrant running the program at this time. Defragmentation can be a time-
consuming process.
Hard disks can fail. While some data recovery is possible even from a faulty drive, you will save
yourself money and time and aggravation if you are careful to back up your hard drive on a regular
basis (your computer retailer can help you select a backup device that meets your needs). If you use
your computer heavily, a weekly backup is probably in order. If you use the system less frequently, a
monthly backup might be in order. While it is often quicker to make a complete backup and then
subsequent incremental backups of new information, you should make a complete backup every few
backup cycles, to save you time in restoring your system in case of failure.
[Sidebar: Eyeball icon: If you do suffer a hard drive failure and have vital data which was not backed
up, you can check with data recovery specialists in your area who might be able to retrieve some of
that data for you.]
The Device Manager
Содержание XP5 Pro
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