Anyone who has worked in the tech support field can tell you: all computers are not created equal. Even the most popular PC manufacturers happily sell hopelessly under-powered computers to cost-conscious consumers who incorrectly assume that a new computer is a fast computer. Today I’d like to focus on what I call a Thrasher: a computer so poorly configured that it can’t perform the simplest of tasks.

Hard drives crash, USB drives disappear, and laptops get stolen. Sometimes bad things happen to good data. Backing up your files to CD’s, DVD’s, or an external hard drive doesn’t protect you against theft or acts of nature. Big business uses off-site storage to protect their data, and this article explains how you can apply this technique to personal data on the cheap using free online storage services.

This third article in a multi-part series about defragmentation explains and shows a video example of how to defragment your hard drives on Windows XP.

This is the second article in my series about file and drive fragmentation. It explains how a drive becomes fragmented and how you can tell if it requires defragmentation.

Fragmentation is  one of the primary ailments that infects a slow computer.  You might have heard the word before. Someone might have even taught you how to fix it.  But most of us don’t know what fragmentation is, how it occurs, and–unlike a virus or spyware–why we’re stuck living with fragmentation in our lives.  Without getting into too many technical details, let me explain what fragmentation is.