Defragmentation is something that naturally happens during a computers life. Every time a computer adds more data to it's disk this is a situation that can arise and over time it slows the PC down. Here's why :
Image a book that is 100 pages long, you've just added another 2 pages (akin to adding a client file) the computer tries to put the 2 pages at the end of the present 100 but finds another book in the way, so it puts it elsewhere, maybe on a different shelf. The computer knows that after the 100 pages it must look on the other shelf.
So you go to read this file, the first 100 pages are read very quickly because they are physically close together on the surface of the disk, but then it needs to jump to the last 2 you just stored, so it moves to the other shelf and continues reading. In reality we're talking the difference between .2 of a second and .5 but consider that a file can be split into thousands and thousands of chunks adding significant seek time to any disk operation.
Defragmentation will shift the books about in such a way so that all the pages are in order, now when we read our 102 page book we don't incur the split second delay, likewise, a file that was split into 60 pieces is now in 1 nice chunk.
Since the computer can never really know which files will grow and which ones won't this fragmentation happens all the time and only frequent maintenance is the answer. This concept does not only apply to your server, but all the PC's in the office - even at home!
Below I explain how to install a defragmentation utility called MyDefrag (JKDefrag), this is free software which is very easy to install and use. It is however not Micros software and we cannot accept any liability for any loss or damage incurred through it's use.
1) Goto the MyDefrag.com website.
2) Download & Run MyDefrag
3) Install MyDefrag
4) Configure MyDefrag
This last part of configuration is largely down to personal preference and usage. For example if I was configuring this software on my home PC or a PC in the office I would tick both screen saver (Defrags your computer when your not using it) and the daily optimization. If however I was configuring an office server I would opt for the daily task only. You may reconfigure the daily task using the Windows Task Scheduler (See Microsoft for help in this area).
This is because although it is perfectly safe to defrag a computer whilst it is in use the computer must use some of it's CPU (Processor) power to do so and during the day when you want 100% of that CPU available to service your requests (such as running Traveller!). Furthermore, the Defrag utility is subject to the same rules and laws that the rest of the computer is - the most significant is that it's not allowed to move a file that is being used - during the day most of the Traveller files are in use so it would be difficult for the application to effectively perform it's job in work hours anyway.
As previously mentioned this software is a suggestion based on years of experiance and testing, it is not Micros Software. There are many different disk optimization utilities available on the market, some of them free, others at a cost.
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