User guide

Appendix D: Hard Drive Configuration and Maintenance 53
Optimizing (Defragmenting) Drives
To prevent fragmentation, you can optimize
your drive, which rearranges your files into a
contiguous format. Most optimizing software
lets you run a check on a drive to find out the
percentage of fragmentation. If your drive
shows moderate to heavy fragmentation, you
should consider optimizing it.
If you use your system for intensive editing, or if
you frequently delete audio or fade files from
your hard drive, you may need to optimize your
drives on a weekly basis, or even every few days,
since it doesn’t take long for even a large hard
drive to become fragmented.
Backing Up Data Before Optimizing
Since your files will be rewritten by the optimi-
zation process, always make a backup copy of
the data on your hard drive before you optimize
it. You should also use a hard drive utility to find
and repair any problems before optimizing data
or re-initializing your drives. If there is any dam-
age to your hard drive's directories prior to opti-
mizing, serious data loss may result.
Defragmenting Windows Audio Drives
To defragment an audio drive (Windows 7 and
Windows Vista):
1 Click Start.
2 Type “disk defragmenter” in the search field at
the bottom. “Disk Defragmenter” should appear
at the top of the search results.
3 Click the Disk Defragmenter.
4 Click the Defragment disk button (Windows 7)
or the Defragment now button (Windows Vista).
Follow the on-screen instructions.
5 When defragmenting is complete, close the
Disk Defragmenter window.
To defragment an audio drive (Windows XP):
1 Right-click My Computer and choose Manage.
2 Under Storage, choose Disk Defragmenter.
3 In the Disk Defragmenter window, choose the
drive you want to defragment
4 Click the Defragment button and follow the
on-screen instructions.
5 When defragmenting is complete, close the
Computer Management window.
In Windows 7 you can Ctrl-Click on the
drive names to select multiple drives to de-
fragment, and once more than one drive is
selected, the button changes to “Defrag-
ment disks.”
The “Defragment Now” (Vista only) com-
mand defragments all your hard drives.
This can take a lot of time, especially on
systems with multiple drives.
Advanced users can use the command line
tool Defrag.exe to defragment individual
drives. See your Windows Vista documen-
tation for more information.