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COMPUTER BITS BY GREG SWAIN Prune & tune your hard disc for optimum performance Is your hard disc bulging at the seams? A good clean out might be all that’s need to restore performance & free up lots of valuable space. It wasn’t too long ago that a 20Mb hard disc was considered more than adequate. Why would you need anything bigger? We all know the answer to that, of course. With the advent of Windows, programs grew in size, with some now requiring up to 30Mb of disc space just to install them. Now, you would be foolish to contemplate purchasing a com­puter with a hard disc capacity of less than 240Mb. And if you intend running a lot of graphics-intensive programs, then a 540Mb or larger hard disc is the minimum requirement (along with a high-end processor and lots of RAM). Even so, it’s all too easy to fill up a large hard disc. But before going out and investing in another drive, take a good hard look at your files. It’s just possible that, with some simple housekeeping, you can free up great chunks of hard disc space and save those hard earned dollars. Here then are five simple steps to freeing up hard disc space and tuning it for best performance. Some of them are obvious but you would be surprised just how many people ignore the obvious. Step 1: Delete Old Files Work files that are no longer wanted simply tie up valuable disc space. Delete them using the Windows File Manager. This job can often be made Watch Out For Computer Viruses The six basic steps listed in this article are all essential for good hard disc maintenance. But there’s one more thing that you should do to keep your hard disc healthy – scan it regularly for viruses. In fact, you can virtually eliminate the risk of a virus by scanning every floppy disc that goes into the machine. Be par­ ticularly diligent with those obtained from an outside source. A virus checker comes with MSDOS 6.0 and above but unfor­tunately it’s not cheap to update on a regular basis. The one used at SILICON CHIP is McAfee’s ViruScan. It is updated on a regular basis and has detected viruses on incoming floppy discs on quite a few occasions. The Stoned virus is the most common but it has also saved us from other nasties, including the dreaded Michelangelo virus. McAfee’s authorised agent in Australia in Doctor Disk. You can contact them in Sydney on (02) 281 2099 and they also have offices in Melbourne, Canberra, Perth, Brisbane and Adelaide. easier if you first sort your files by type or by date. To do this, click on View in File Manager, then select the wanted option from the drop-down menu box. If you are in doubt about deleting a file, create a “gar­bage” directory (ie, C:\GARBAGE) and drag the file into it. If you haven’t used the file after several months, then it’s prob­ably safe to delete it. By the way, avoid mixing work files with program files. Store your work files in a separate directory (or subdirectory) instead. This will make it easier to keep track of your work files and prevent accidental deletions of wanted program files. Finally, if you no longer use a program, then why leave it sitting on the hard disc? It can always be reinstalled at a later date if need be. Step 2: Run Chkdsk Regularly When a program crashes, it can create lost allocation units (file segments) which, over time, will eventually occupy lots of hard disc space. To retrieve this space, first quit all appli­ cations, including Windows and MSDOS Shell, and go the root directory of the drive you want to check. Now type chkdsk /f. If lost allocation units are found, a screen prompt appears asking if you want to convert the lost chains to files. If you press N, the lost chains are deleted and your disc space is freed. Conversely, if you press Y, Chkdsk converts the lost allo­cations units to files (eg, FILE0000.CHK, FILE­0001. CHK, etc) and stores them in your root directory. You can then examine the April 1995  65 K ALEX The UV People ETCH TANKS ● Bubble Etch ● Circulating LIGHT BOXES ● Portuvee 4 ● Portuvee 6 ● Dual Level TRIMMER ● Ideal PCB DRILL ● Toyo HiSpeed MATERIALS Fig.1: temporary (.tmp) files can soon clog up a hard disc if not cleaned off regularly. These files can be left on the hard disc if Windows crashes or a Windows application stops running unexpectedly. Be sure to exit Windows before deleting .tmp files – see text. ✸ AUSTRALIA’S NO.1 STOCKIST ✸ contents of these files and retrieve any data that you might want to keep. The .CHK files should then be deleted using the del command. More information on chkdsk can be found in your MS-DOS manual. By the way, it’s always a good idea to run Chkdsk before running Defrag or DoubleSpace (see below). ● PC Board: Riston, Dynachem ● 3M Label/Panel Stock ● Dynamark: Metal, Plastic K ALEX 40 Wallis Ave, East Ivanhoe 3079. Phone (03) 9497 3422, Fax (03) 9499 2381 TRANSFORMERS • TOROIDAL • CONVENTIONAL • POWER • OUTPUT • CURRENT • INVERTER • PLUGPACKS • CHOKES STOCK RANGE TOROIDALS BEST PRICES APPROVED TO AS 3108-1990 SPECIALS DESIGNED & MADE 15VA to 7.5kVA Tortech Pty Ltd 24/31 Wentworth St, Greenacre 2190 Phone (02) 642 6003 Fax (02) 642 6127 66  Silicon Chip Step 3: Delete Temporary Files Windows applications create temporary files on the hard disc while they are running. These files always have a .TMP extension and they should all be automatically deleted when you exit Windows. However, if Windows or a Windows application crash­es, or you switch off the computer without leaving Windows, these temporary files can be left scattered on the disk. Eventually, temporary files can occupy a huge amount of hard disc space, so it pays to delete them regularly. How do you know where these files are? Just take a peek at your auto­exec.bat file. To view it, go to the root directory (eg, C:\) and enter “type autoexec. bat”. Temporary files will be written to the directory specified by the line SET TEMP=C:\directory. All you have to do is go to that directory and erase all the .TMP files. Don’t do this from inside Windows, though – you must exit Windows first, otherwise you will erase valid .tmp files that are in use. Actually, its a good idea to create a separate “temp” directory and edit the line in your autoexec.bat file to read “SET TEMP=C:\TEMP”. That way, the .TMP files will be written to the temp directory and will not get mixed up with wanted files. This will make it easier to delete them (you could even write a batch file to do this). Alternatively, you can place the temp directory on a RAM disc (if you have one). By doing this, any .tmp files will be automatically erased when the computer is turned off. Step 4: Zip Up Little-Used Files Lots of valuable disc space can be retrieved by zipping up little-used files. Two very popular file compression programs are LHArc and PKZIP and these can either be downloaded as shareware from bulletin boards or obtained from software vendors. Many graphics files will zip up to 20% or less of their original size, so file compression can be very worthwhile. There’s just one thing to watch out for here – be sure to delete the original file after zipping it up. Another approach is to use “compression on the fly”. This involves creating a compressed drive on the hard disc using DoubleSpace or some other disc compression program. The advantage of DoubleSpace is that it comes “free” with MS-DOS 6.0 and above. To use it, just follow the instructions in the manual. Compression on the fly is trans- parent to the user. Your files are automatically compressed when they a saved to a com­pressed drive and can be opened in the normal fashion. You don’t have to manually zip files up or unzip them when you want to use them, as with LHArc and PKZIP. On the other hand, your files will not be zipped up as tightly (typically, 2:1) and they will take slightly longer to open and save than files that are not com­pressed. Creating A Permanent Swapfile Step 5: Defrag The Disc Having run Chkdsk and deleted all those unwanted files, it’s time for a disc tune-up. You can do that by “defragging” the remaining files so that they are written in contiguous (consecu­tive) blocks on the hard disc. In normal use, files on the disk can become fragmented. This occurs because there is often not enough contiguous space to store a file and so it is broken into fragments and stored in different locations on the disc. These locations are then stored in a “file allocation table”, so that DOS knows where to find the various fragments. Unfortunately, fragmentation slows the computer down be­cause the disc heads have to move over larger areas of the disc in order to read and write files. The way around this is to run the Defrag utility that’s supplied with MS-DOS 6.0 and above and with other software (eg, Norton’s Utilities). On a badly defrag­mented disc, this can give a worthwhile performance boost. To run the Defrag utility, quit all programs including Windows, go to the DOS prompt, type “defrag” and press <enter>. After that, select the hard disc drive you wish to defrag and choose “OK”. The utility will then analyse that drive and recom­ mend a defragmentation option. Choose “Optimise” to begin, then sit back and watch the show as files are shuffled about the disc. Don’t interrupt or switch off while Defrag is running, otherwise you could loose data. Step 6: Create A Permanent Swap File When you start Windows in Enhanced mode, it frees up memory by temporarily swapping information to a “swap file” on your hard disc. If you Fig.2: to create a permanent swapfile, double-click 386 Enhanced in the Control Panel, then choose Virtual Memory & Change. The recommended swapfile size is usually the best option but you can change it if you wish. don’t have a permanent swap file, then Windows creates a temporary swap file each time it is started. This can shrink and grow in size as required, which means that it can fragment. A permanent swap file on the other hand is contiguous and will therefore boost performance. To create a permanent swap file, first exit Windows and run Chkdsk and Defrag to optimise the drive and create a large block of contiguous disc space. This done, restart Windows and double-click the Control panel icon in the Main group. Now double-click the 386 Enhanced icon and choose the Virtual Memory button. Click Change, then choose Permanent from the Type list. You can now either accept the size recommended by Windows or type in a new figure if you wish to alter this. Finally, click OK and click Restart. Windows will now restart so that your changes take effect. A large contiguous swapfile will now be present on the hard disc. In fact, if you run Defrag again, this file can be seen as a large string of Xs (indicating that they are unmoveable). Note that this area cannot be written to by other files, which means that the remaining disc space is shrunk by the size of the swap­file. If hard disc space is at a premium, try using a smaller permanent swapfile or, if you have lots of RAM, try deleting the permanent SC swapfile altogether. April 1995  67