How to make your Hard Drive Operate Optimally part 1/2 Video

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How to make your Hard Drive Operate Optimally part 1/2

Windows XP Tune up Video #7 Today I am going to show you a few more things and we’ll be complete with our series of videos here. The first thing we want to check is we want to check to make sure that our hard drives are operating optimally with DMA Mode which is Direct Memory Access. So let’s go ahead and choose the Start menu and right click your My Computer Icon and select Properties. We’re going to choose the Hardware tab and under the Hardware tab, you will see the listing for Device Manger. Go ahead and select the Device manager Button. Okay, the item we’re going to be—look for in here is the IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers and if you’ll go ahead and select the little plus sign next to that item, that will expand it. Now can you see a few things in here—what we are really concerned with are the Primary IDE Channel and the Secondary IDE Channel. In here is show two because I have a raid controller and it operates a little differently than normal system so in your system, you will probably see only one of each of these. And the first thing we want to do is right click and choose Properties on the first item. Then we’re going to choose the Advance Settings tab. We want to make sure that Transfer Mode under Device 0 is set to DMA if available. As well, under Device 1, we want to make sure that DMA, if available is selected. If you have changed those, as you can see, they are already enabled in my system. If you did make change to that, you will need to select OK. It’s probably going to ask you to restart your machine. We’ll go ahead and check the others to make sure when we have DMA if available and DMA if available. Once again, if you change those, select OK rather than Cancel. Then we’ll go ahead and check them all. Once, again, DMA if available, DMA if available and select OK. Now, you may be prompted to restart each time you make these change. Go ahead and perform that restart in between each setting change. And now that—let’s see here, one more. Okay, we’re going to go ahead and close this out and close the Device Manager as well as the System Properties. Another handy way to do a lot of the Maintenance that we have already completed as far as temporary files are concerned is to use the System Cleanup Utility. Let’s go ahead and show you how to invoke that by opening My Computer. You can right click your C drive and select properties and here on the main page, you see this option for Disk Cleanup. Go ahead and select the Disk Cleanup button. It is always god to this at least once a month. That is what I would recommend. If you do a lot of searching on the internet and do a lot of work with installation of programs or even in Word or the Office products, it can create a lot of temporary files and you should do this at least once a month. You may want to do it twice a month. And here of course I have used this option constantly so there is not a lot of information here. You see that it will remove downloaded program files, Temporary Internet files, which we showed you another way earlier. Office set up files; it will clean the Recycle Bin and delete Temporary files. So once you have opened that program, go ahead and make sure that these items are checked. I do not recommended using the Compress old files, when you compress files, it does take your computer longer to access those files. So if that is selected, I would deselect it. Once that is complete, go ahead and select the OK button. Now it says are you sure you want to perform these action; the answer is ‘yes.’ Okay and that completes that’s aspect. Let’s see here, under the Tools Menu, there is another option here for Defragmentation. We can go ahead and select the Defragment now button. Here you have a couple of options, of course, make sure your C: drive is highlighted if you do have more then one drive—my D: drive is a Compressed Image Drive, it just basically holds an image and can not be scanned or defragmented. But if you do have another drive that you store information on, you can run this process for that drive as well. Just go ahead and highlight your C: drive and you can hit the Analyze button for a short little report—here it says, ‘analysis is complete for the C: drive. You do not need to defragment this volume. Now, it it’s been more than 30 days since you last defragmented, regardless of whether it tells you that you do not need to defragmet this volume. I would recommend defragmenting. Then go ahead and select defragment on that menu and the process will start. Depending upon the size of your hard drive and the speed of your computer as well as how much installed memory you might have, this process can take an hour or more. So I am going to go ahead and pause this while this runs. Okay, that tool about 45 minutes for my System. As you can see the defragmentation is complete and I am going to go ahead and close this Window as well as closing the utilities. Now, for many of the utilities and operations, we have completed, there is a utility that can aide you in this processes. We’re going to go ahead and review that program and run a couple of the utilities on it having to do with registry cleanup. So, if you will open your Internet Explorer and once again, simply open Google and we’re going to type in the address in the address bar of www.pcpowersuite.com and choose the Go button or enter. You can use a FREE Trial of this program. We’re going to go ahead and Download the FREE Trial. And select Save and choose your Save In Location which mine is the Desktop and select the Save button. Okay, that is complete. Now, I am going to go ahead and close the Internet Explorer Window. Now you can double click the installer to invoke the installation process. Select Run and it’s notifying you this is the installer, you can either click Next to continue or Cancel to Exit. I am going to choose Next. Be sure to read and agree with the license agreement.

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Windows XP Tune up Video #7
Today I am going to show you a few more things and we’ll be complete with our series of videos here.
The first thing we want to check is we want to check to make sure that our hard drives are operating optimally with DMA Mode which is Direct Memory Access.
So let’s go ahead and choose the Start menu and right click your My Computer Icon and select Properties. We’re going to choose the Hardware tab and under the Hardware tab, you will see the listing for Device Manger. Go ahead and select the Device manager Button.
Okay, the item we’re going to be—look for in here is the IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers and if you’ll go ahead and select the little plus sign next to that item, that will expand it. Now can you see a few things in here—what we are really concerned with are the Primary IDE Channel and the Secondary IDE Channel. In here is show two because I have a raid controller and it operates a little differently than normal system so in your system, you will probably see only one of each of these.
And the first thing we want to do is right click and choose Properties on the first item. Then we’re going to choose the Advance Settings tab. We want to make sure that Transfer Mode under Device 0 is set to DMA if available. As well, under Device 1, we want to make sure that DMA, if available is selected. If you have changed those, as you can see, they are already enabled in my system. If you did make change to that, you will need to select OK. It’s probably going to ask you to restart your machine. We’ll go ahead and check the others to make sure when we have DMA if available and DMA if available. Once again, if you change those, select OK rather than Cancel. Then we’ll go ahead and check them all. Once, again, DMA if available, DMA if available and select OK. Now, you may be prompted to restart each time you make these change. Go ahead and perform that restart in between each setting change. And now that—let’s see here, one more. Okay, we’re going to go ahead and close this out and close the Device Manager as well as the System Properties.
Another handy way to do a lot of the Maintenance that we have already completed as far as temporary files are concerned is to use the System Cleanup Utility. Let’s go ahead and show you how to invoke that by opening My Computer. You can right click your C drive and select properties and here on the main page, you see this option for Disk Cleanup. Go ahead and select the Disk Cleanup button.
It is always god to this at least once a month. That is what I would recommend. If you do a lot of searching on the internet and do a lot of work with installation of programs or even in Word or the Office products, it can create a lot of temporary files and you should do this at least once a month. You may want to do it twice a month.
And here of course I have used this option constantly so there is not a lot of information here. You see that it will remove downloaded program files, Temporary Internet files, which we showed you another way earlier. Office set up files; it will clean the Recycle Bin and delete Temporary files. So once you have opened that program, go ahead and make sure that these items are checked. I do not recommended using the Compress old files, when you compress files, it does take your computer longer to access those files. So if that is selected, I would deselect it.
Once that is complete, go ahead and select the OK button. Now it says are you sure you want to perform these action; the answer is ‘yes.’
Okay and that completes that’s aspect. Let’s see here, under the Tools Menu, there is another option here for Defragmentation. We can go ahead and select the Defragment now button. Here you have a couple of options, of course, make sure your C: drive is highlighted if you do have more then one drive—my D: drive is a Compressed Image Drive, it just basically holds an image and can not be scanned or defragmented. But if you do have another drive that you store information on, you can run this process for that drive as well. Just go ahead and highlight your C: drive and you can hit the Analyze button for a short little report—here it says, ‘analysis is complete for the C: drive. You do not need to defragment this volume. Now, it it’s been more than 30 days since you last defragmented, regardless of whether it tells you that you do not need to defragmet this volume. I would recommend defragmenting. Then go ahead and select defragment on that menu and the process will start. Depending upon the size of your hard drive and the speed of your computer as well as how much installed memory you might have, this process can take an hour or more. So I am going to go ahead and pause this while this runs.
Okay, that tool about 45 minutes for my System. As you can see the defragmentation is complete and I am going to go ahead and close this Window as well as closing the utilities.
Now, for many of the utilities and operations, we have completed, there is a utility that can aide you in this processes. We’re going to go ahead and review that program and run a couple of the utilities on it having to do with registry cleanup.
So, if you will open your Internet Explorer and once again, simply open Google and we’re going to type in the address in the address bar of www.pcpowersuite.com and choose the Go button or enter. You can use a FREE Trial of this program. We’re going to go ahead and Download the FREE Trial. And select Save and choose your Save In Location which mine is the Desktop and select the Save button. Okay, that is complete. Now, I am going to go ahead and close the Internet Explorer Window.
Now you can double click the installer to invoke the installation process. Select Run and it’s notifying you this is the installer, you can either click Next to continue or Cancel to Exit. I am going to choose Next. Be sure to read and agree with the license agreement.

Transcription by: Scribe4you Transcription Services