11. Defragment

When you delete any data from your hard drive it will leave an empty space. The new data written to the hard drive will start filling in the empty space, however if the new data is larger than the empty space, it will be split into two and the remaining data written to the next empty space. Over time this situation leads to your hard drive having to work much harder than it should do, as it searches for file sections.

Defragmenting your drives places data for each file type next to each other. All your music file types will be grouped together, making it quicker and easier for your hard drive to read the data which will increase the stability of Scratch LIVE.

We would recommend you regularly defragment your hard drive and external drive and don't allow your hard drive to become more than 75% full.

To defragment your drive: Windows start -> computer -> right click on the chosen drive -> properties -> tools -> defragment now.

Vista will let you set a regular time to defrag so you don't have to remember. We recommend you set a regular time which is during a period of inactivity and roughly fits between 100 hours of use.

12. Further reading

The following links are some of the web research we carried out before writing this article. They offer further information regarding Vista and audio programs.

www.audioforums.com
www.keyboardmag.com
www.soundonsound.com
www.musictechmag.co.uk
www.createdigitalmusic.com
www.vistaultimate.com
www.tweakvista.com

Disclaimer - The information in this article is provided for free, please acknowledge that it would be unreasonable to hold us liable in respect of the information. We endeavour to ensure that the information provided is correct, so we will not be liable for any direct, indirect or consequential loss or damage arising in connection with this article.

Remember - Always back up important data and or create a system restore point before making any major changes to your operating system.