Tom's Tuesday Tech Tip: To Defrag or Not to Defrag – That is the Question for Legal Nurse Consultants

I am willing to bet that most Certified Legal Nurse Consultants have never defragged their hard drives before reading today’s Tuesday Tech Tip. I’m also willing to bet that many of you will and some of you won’t defrag your hard drives after reading this. Some of my CLNC^® amigos may even ask me, “What is defragging and why do I need it anyway?”

Let me explain. Think of the hard drive on the computer you’re using in your legal nurse consulting business like a record or perhaps a CD. The programs and data on that platter are arranged, at first, in neat logical sequences, just like a song on that record or CD. As the platter spins, the data is read off and written onto the platter. But when it’s rewritten or saved, it goes back into available space – not the most logical space. The data becomes fragmented and spread out across the drive taking longer to find and read.

In days of yore, I believed in defragging my hard drive at least once a week. But is that necessary? If you’ve purchased a new computer for your CLNC^® business in the last three years I would say no. Computers have gotten so fast that defragging them doesn’t lead to an appreciable, or perceptible, gain in speed. Your computer might notice it, but you probably won’t.

But, if your computer is four years old or older, defragging may help – especially if you have lots of data, legal nurse consulting work product, photos, music and other stuff. For those of you with older Windows^® computers who want to defrag their machine, simply click on the Start button, then click Programs and navigate to Accessories, scroll over System Tools and click Disk Defragmenter, and follow the instructions. If you’ve got a newer machine you can do that too – just for the placebo effect.

But, here’s a warning (which I like to place at the end to ensure you read the entire Tech Tip), if you have a cool Solid State Drive (SSD), like I do, instead of a traditional spinning hard drive, DO NOT run the defragmenter. It will shorten the life of that expensive SSD drive.

So to defrag or not to defrag – that’s the question for you today.

Keep on techin’,