Defragmenting your hard drive can speed up the reading and writing of data on your hard disk. Defragging your hard drives frequently can keep the disks working at their best, but this can be a chore to remember.

For those with Windows Vista, there is a utility to enable automatic defragging. However, most people are still wise enough to delay updating until the bugs with drivers and system are ironed out. XP users can still automate the defrag process: you can let Windows' Scheduled Tasks take care of defragmenting your hard drive for you.

I have covered scheduling a task previously in my guide to scheduling Synctoy, I will repeat these instructions with the relevant changes below.

Scheduling a task to defrag your hard drive(s) is pretty straight forward:

• Open Scheduled Tasks from Control Panel (Start > Settings > Control Panel, or Start > Control Panel).
• Double-Click on Add Scheduled Task, then click next in the wizard that opens.
• Click on Browse... under the list of applications, and navigate to WINDOWS > System 32 > defrag.exe, click Open.
• Rename the task to something memorable (such as Defrag C Drive), choose a frequency for the task to execute (you can refine the timings and days later).
• In the next screen choose a time and relevant other options regarding the timing of the task. (I run defrag.exe on my system (C) drive once a week, and once every two weeks on my backup drive).
  
• Enter your username and password on the next screen (dont have a password? Get one, more on that later).
• In the final screen click "Open Advanced Properties for this task when I click Finish", and click Finish.
• In the properties window now open add the drive letter to the end of the Run:  entry. It should look something like this (with the drive letter you want to defrag, I am using C here):

• If you require a more advanced schedule click on the Schedule tab, and you may wish to change some of the advanced settings in the Settings tab.

That's it, your done! Now you can forget about it and your hard drive will run at its optimum speed for as long as you keep the task.

 

If you are having trouble getting the task to start, it is probably because the username and/or password are not correct. Look at the Last Result column in Scheduled Tasks, 0x0 means the last run was successful, 0x1 means the task didn't run (as I mention above, this is probably because of the password.

 

If you are sure you don't want a system password for your account then you can simply check the "Run only if logged on" checkbox, this bypasses the need for a password.

 

I can accept no responsibility for damage to your data or computer. You must understand what you are doing before attempting any of the above. Be sure to backup before trying anything.

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