When your computer writes things to your hard drives, it doesn't necessarily put them in any logical place, it just sticks them where they will fit.

A defragment of the hard drives takes all those bits of files that are all over the places, and orders them neatly. If you've done a lot of writes to your disk, and installed lots of things and never defragg'ed it, you can get a fairly noticeable difference in performance by doing it.

It's an option you can get to in Windows Explorer, under Properties (when you right click the hard drive you want to defrag).

Honestly, it doesn't do that much unless you treat your hard drive very poorly. But there's absolutely no harm in doing it anyway - it can just take a long time.

Delete the Steam games at the front of my hard drive so Skyrim can occupy that prime real estate (yay for .5% faster read speeds). I'll defrag and optimize overnight once I have it installed.

In Windows Explorer, right-click one of your hard drives (C: for example), select "Properties," "Tools," and then "Defragment Now." Solid-state drives don't need it, only Hard Disk drives. For more info, I'm sure there's a Wikipedia Article, or I personally recommend Tweak Guides and Tom's Hardware (Google them). As for what it actually does, it basically re-arranges bits and pieces of files to be "closer together" so when the OS calls for them, they don't take so long to find. There's a lot more to it than that, but long and short.

AS FOR THE THREAD, my work has been focused on preparing my marriage and home for Skyrim- took an extra day and a half off of work (repeatedly reminded the missus that Skyrim is a lot like her "Twilight" and "six and the City" all rolled into one, except it's 500+ hours long), making sure all the car maintenance is done, lawns are mowed and trimmed, and the kitchen is stocked with food units (and tasty advlt beverages) that are easy to consume with minimal disruptions.

I miss the Morrowind/Oblivion days when none of the above was even on the radar screen...

Sent my laptop in for a tuneup (GPU repaste, new keyboard, new LCD etc.) which is biting me in the ass - I won't have it back until Saturday at the earliest.

I've made sure I have the current Nvidia video driver and also made sure my Sound driver was the most recent. Tonight I defragged and ran the virus checker. Tomorrow I'll back everything up and I'll be as ready as I can be.

Yep, will be fighting the dust monsters inside my computer case whenever I get my Skyrim box. Everything else is in tip top notch shape!

Aye, I don't miss that mess anymore, almost 18 years of doing that. It's less of a problem nowadays since Windows XP to Windows 7 have it on routine and usually ran when I was asleep or out of the house. I decided on the 240GB SSD internal and 4TB external for my new rig, this is the future. Near instant load on games, files and programs and all data saved to the external to take with you and for backup and never a need to defrag the SSD. Prices are dropping like water too.

Gotta agree that the Win 7 plus compartmentalizing hard drives is the way to go. In my case, I saved some money and got an 80 GB SSD for games only (you can move a Steam installation with games, just figured that out today). I don't much care if Outlook takes an extra three seconds to load, but an extra 200ms on the next level in Skyrim will totally be worth it.

Deleted all my steam games and "defraged" my hard drive.

Prepping to build my first gaming PC to eventually play Skyrim on after i've finished playing the PS3 version.

It took Oblivion load times from 3-5 seconds down to 0.5-1 seconds. Although, I did go from a 5400 RPM standard so the difference was incredible.

First thing I'm doing tomorrow is going down to Radioshack and picking up some thermal paste. 69c under load just isn't going to cut it.

Just finished doing a scary a** CCC and Driver update for my 5770, Defrag is automatic should be done tomorrow.

Should of read the FAQ on the ati website and read the line, reboot machine. Before attempting to run Crysis 2 on ultra. "Crysis cannot find your video driver", "aw crap "says me. What did I do. reboot everything is fine except Oblivion reset to 800 x 600. and Fallout:NV runs at 1280 x 1024.

I have the latest gpu driver.
I went to defrag but it doesnt need it, which I thought was odd.
I need to clean the small amout of dust near the psu intake, and between the radiator and its fan.
...and make sure the internet connection will be fine (I hardly access it on that computer.)

That's right computer, we have to get you in tip top shape for Skyrim.

1. Updated to most recent video drivers
2. Thorough disk defrag and registry cleanup
3. Thorough physical cleaning (dusted off the fans and the rest of tower interior)
4. Thorough cleaning of the monitor


The normal PC preventative maintenance/upkeep sort of stuff =P

I put magnets all over my metal case and sprayed all the dust out with a garden hose outside.

what preparation? just do it when the game will unlock.

I didn't even think about it until I saw this thread. Thanks!

Time to update video drivers!

+ Upgraded to Windows 7 from Vista
+ Bought maxed out 8gb memory
+ Dusted the insides (especially around my Nvidia gt465)
+ Bought an expensive Logitech headset with surround sound.

Why did you buy a crappy Logitech headset? :/

You need brands like Alessandro, AKG, Audio Technica, Beyerdynamic, Sennheiser not Logitech, Logitech headphones are some of the worst there are.

http://www.amazon.com/Sony-MDR-V600-Studio-Monitor-Headphones/dp/B00001W0DI

^^^these sound amazing

The build I'm on at the moment is currently less than a month old. Aside from the perfunctory checks and tweaks I'd have done normally anyway, I'm good to go

Actually I did do something, I changed the back light on my keyboard and the LED lights in my mouse to a nice icy blue colour

You know, computers love coffee too- a good alternative to overclocking.

...Really no.

http://headphones.com.au/psingle?productID=563 sound amazing.

Mainstream brands are terrible. The brands I listed earlier don't market to the mainstream market because they make plenty of money selling to studios and broadcasters - people who need good quality. Real good quality not "slightly less crap than the other thing" which is what you'll get from $60 Sony's.

You can buy brand name (ie; proper audio brand name such as Sennheiser) headphones for like, $50 even. No excuse to not do it.

I hope no one reports that some guy recommended pouring coffee in their computer, and now they want advice on decaf or regular.