One of the quick and easy way to increase hard disk performance is by defragmenting the Disk drives. Of course you can use the Windows Disk Defragmenter, but i recommend Power Defragmenter a small free utility by sysinternals . The latest 3.0 version comes with TriplePass(TM) mode replacing obsolete PowerMode(TM) and can Defragment removable disks. Further you can also use Page Degrag another free utility again by sysinternals to defrag you paging and registry files.
But thats not all, here is a method to speed your hard disk speed by configuring the special buffers in your computer’s memory in order to enable it to better deal with interrupts made from the disk.
I recommend this Tip for those using 256MB RAM or higher,
Follow these steps:
- Run SYSEDIT.EXE from the command prompt (start>run>cmd).
- Expand the system.ini file window.
- Scroll down till you find a line called [386enh].
- Press Enter to make one blank line, and in that line type
Irq14=4096
(Note: this is CASE SENSITIVE)
(click to enlarge)
- Save the file before closing it
- Close SYSEDIT and reboot your pc.
Speed improvements will be noticed once you reboot your computer.
Note: The most speed improvement is visible on IDE drives. However there are reports that this tweak also works good on SCSI drives.
This tweak won’t harm you system in any case, so give a try and let me know if it works good for you.
My favourite defragger is Diskeeper08. Great boot defrag and it can also be set to run unobtrusively in the automatic mode while the PC is functioning as usual.