Lab – Hard Drive Maintenance
Instructor Note: Red font color or gray highlights indicate text that appears in the Instructor copy only.
Introduction
In this lab, you will examine the results of using Disk Check and Disk Defragmenter on a hard drive.
Instructor Note: If the hard drive is an SSD, do not let students perform the defragmentation. Defragmentation should not hurt the SSD, but it is not necessary with this type of drive.
Recommended Equipment
- A computer running Windows
- Two or more partitions on the hard drive
Instructions
Step 1: Run the Error-checking Tool on a disk volume.
a. Log on to Windows as an administrator.
b. In Windows 10 and 8.1, open the File Explorer. In Windows 7, open Windows Explorer.
c. In Windows 10 and 8.1, click This PC. In Windows 7, click Computer. Verify that there are at least two partitions on the hard drive.
If there is only one partition on the hard drive, use Disk Management to create a second partition with at least 2GB.
d. Right-click the volume without an installed Windows OS. Click Properties.
e. In the Properties window, click the Tools tab. In Windows 10 and 8.1, click Check to start the error checking. In Windows 7, click Check Now.
f. In Windows 10 and 8.1, Windows monitors the drives and runs automatic scheduled scans. You may see a message saying that You don’t need to scan this drive. Click Scan drive (Windows 10) or Scan and repair drive or Scan drive (Windows 8.1).
In Windows 7, click Start to begin to check disk. You can use the default choices.
g. When you receive a message that your drive or disk was successfully scanned, click Show details (Windows 10 and 8.1) or See details (Windows 7).
h. In Windows 10 and 8.1, the Event Viewer opens to display the Chkdsk event. Double click the Information event in the middle pane.
In Windows 7, the Checking Disk window expands to display the details. The details are similar to the information displayed in the Event Viewer in Windows 10 and 8.1.
Questions:
How many stages were processed?
Answers may vary. 3 stages if no problems occurred during check.
Were any problems found with the volume? If problems were found, what were they?
Answers may vary.
i. Click Close. Close the Event Viewer as necessary.
Step 2: Use the Disk defragmenter tool.
Note: Do not perform this step if your computer has an SSD drive. It is unnecessary to defragment SSD drives.
a. Navigate to the Properties window for the drive that does not have a Windows OS installation.
b. In the Properties window, click the Tools tab. In Windows 10 and 8.1, click Optimize to start disk optimization. In Windows 7, click Defragment now to start defragmentation.
c. In Windows 10 and 8.1, select the volume without an installed Windows OS. Click Analyze in the Optimize Disk window.
In Windows 7, click Analyze disk in the Disk Defragmenter window.
Question:
What percentage of the disk is fragmented?
Answers may vary
d. Click Optimize to start defragmenting the disk in Windows 10 and 8.1. In Windows 7, click Defragment disk.
Question:
What is the first process during defragmenting (See Current status or Progress column)?
Analyzed.
What are the four tasks performed for each pass (See Current status or Progress column)?
Relocated, defragmented, and consolidated.
How many passes did it take to defragment drive?
Answers may vary. 6 passes.
e. When defragmenting is complete, click Close.
f. Close all windows.
Note: It is not possible to view the detail of the defragmented hard drive through the GUI version of defragmenter.
Previous Lab
11.3.2.8 Lab – Manage System Files