When was the last time you defragmented your computer? Last month? Last year? Never?

Defragmenting our systems’ hard disks should be an important part of everyone’s computer maintenance schedule, but it’s amazing how rarely this function is actually performed. Then again, considering how many of us actually maintain our systems, we shouldn’t be too surprised with the poor attention paid to this critical computer component.

Before I get too far, I should mention that while I’m going to promote O&O software here, this post is not sponsored or in any way paid for by the company. I’ve merely had a great experience with the software and regularly receive coupons which are good for decent discounts on their hard disk-related products.

What Is Fragmentation, And Why Should I Care?

Fragmentation is what happens when a computer is saving data to the hard drive and cannot quickly find a place large enough for the whole file, or needs to update a part of an existing data file with more or new information. Think of this as writing the first draft of an essay that uses every page in a 40-page notebook. In this situation, let’s also say that the first draft fits perfectly on 36 of those pages. As you make the first revision, you note several large problems with key sentences and paragraphs. Because this is just a draft copy, and nobody will see the notebook after your project is complete, you decide to re-write those sentences and paragraphs on the remaining 4 pages with numbered pointers in the back. Now, if you were to read the essay again, you would have to jump back and forth between the front and back of the book. Though the book is now full, this is still manageable, so it doesn’t bother you too much.

However, on the next revision you find some more errors and areas that could be improved. After applying some white out on the areas of text you’ve replaced, you add the new revisions and more pointers to and from the pages where your report was altered. Now when you read your (roughly) 40-page essay, you’re jumping from the front, to the back, to the front, to page 18, to the back, to page 3, then page 9, then 37, then back to page 3 … The amount of time you would spend just flipping through the 40-page book to find the next part of the text would be staggering. You could easily spend just as much time following pointers as you do reading. What fun is that?

Now imagine doing this with over a thousand books of various length and presenting them to somebody in some usable fashion. Believe it or not, his daunting task could be performed by your computer every time you boot, load an application, or try to print a document.

No wonder our once fast computers are slower than molasses in January!

Putting Things In Order

With all the things we ask our computers to do on a daily basis, it’s important that we keep our data in order and easily accessible by the system. In order to do this, we need some good-quality defragmentation software. Although Windows and Mac’s OSX do ship with built-in disk management tools, they really leave much to be desired.

I’ve been using O&O’s Disk Defragmenter program for over six years and found it to be a superior product to several of their competitors. Like most defragmentation packages, O&O lets us schedule jobs to run at night, and will even give us the ability to specify how our files should be organized: by space, name, access time, or in stealth mode.

What attracted me the most to this software, though, was how quickly my system responded after its first operation on my last notebook. In 2002, I was looking for something that would organize my data quickly and not consume lots of resources while doing it. After several tests with the competition, it seemed my old Pentium 3 performed best after a simple “space” defrag with O&O. A few weeks later, I tried the “access” defrag and was outright shocked by how fast the system would then boot and load Office 2003.

It was at that moment that I decided O&O would be my defragger of choice.

If I had to make one criticism, it’s that there are no products for the Windows Mobile user. That said, the mobile market isn’t exactly booming at the moment.

Not Free, But Here’s A Coupon

As a customer of O&O, I regularly receive email promotions telling of new updates or offering coupons for other products. Considering how important digital maintenance is for the well-being of our computers, I’d be remiss if I didn’t help others by sharing a coupon code or two. To this end, I’ve asked the people at O&O if I could share these discounts, and they’ve been kind enough to agree.

This month the company is offering 30% on all products, including their bundled packages. To take advantage of this, simply enter the following code at checkout:

S7K-GH1-Q5D

The coupon is good until July 29th, so there’s not much time. However, I’ll be sure to post an updated coupon code when it becomes available. You can see O&O’s complete program offering here, and I’d be happy to give you my honest opinion about any of the products, as I’ve used them all at one time or another in the past.