Consumers are often aware that routine maintenance operations should be performed on personal computers and other information technology systems in a systematic way or at regular intervals. Yet it is not uncommon for a user or purchaser of an electronic computational device to lack the specific knowledge of how to direct the electronic device to perform such preventative maintenance operations. In particular, it is widely known that memory discs of hard disc drives of personal computers should routinely be defragmented, but many consumers remain unfamiliar with how to run defragmentation utility programs that are typically resident on their personal computer or other electronic computational device when purchased.
In the context of maintaining and administering information technology systems, defragmentation is a process that reduces the amount of fragmentation exhibited by software encoded file systems as stored in a physical computer-readable medium, such as a magnetic or an optical disc. Many information technology systems defragment a memory disc by physically reorganizing the contents of the disc to store the pieces of each software-encoded file close together and contiguously. Certain information technology systems further attempt to create larger regions of free space within a hard disc by using compaction to impede the return of fragmentation.
Hundreds or thousands of software-encoded files may be written into and stored in a hard disc of a personal computer or other computational device. As software files are eliminated in the disc and new ones are added during operations of the host device, fragmentation of the disc space may be affected wherein numerous areas of the disc that are temporarily not tasked with storing accessible information may separate disc space that is storing accessible information. The efficiency of searching for information stored on a hard disc can be degraded by the presence of large and/or numerous areas of temporarily unused disc space when the unused disc space areas are widely interspersed with disc space areas that store information that is designated by a comprising or communicatively coupled information technology system to be presently accessible. Effective and timely defragmentations of a hard disc will thus typically support the more efficient operation of the hard disc drive and may save a computer user both time and expense.
There is therefore a long felt need to simplify the actions needed to be taken by a user of a computational device having a hard disc drive to routinely, systematically or occasionally defragment the hard disc of the hard disc drive.