All hard drives need to be regularly maintained to function properly. A hard drive contains a disc on which information is stored. Information is written from the middle of the disc , out in a spiral. If you move, alter or erase info from the drive, it will remove data from the place it occupied,…leaving a blank space with info both before and after it in this “spiral”. The next time the system writes to the hard drive, it will fill in this empty space, before picking up the end of the “spiral”. This results in a “Fragmented File”. Over time, through normal operation these fragments grow smaller and more numerous. As this occurs, it becomes increasingly difficult for the computer (your VS), to locate and read the info stored on the hard drive, as individual files can be broken up into fragments all over the drive. This leads to slowed system performance, and can ultimately cause a hard drive to lock up, or loose the ability to accurately catalog it’s info, leading to directory issues.<\/p>\n
To avoid these problems, and to keep our machines running to their peak level, it is recommended that you re-format your drive every 3-6 months. Re-formatting the drive erases everything on it, and re-builds the directory structure. Because re-formatting erases your disc completely, you must FIRST BACK-UP ANY INFO YOU WANT TO KEEP. Information on this procedure can be found elsewhere in the Help Desk.<\/p>\n
To format your Hard Drive:<\/p>\n
1.) Navigate to your Project List.<\/p>\n
2.) Use your Time\/Value Wheel to scroll to the top of the list. You want IDE:0 to have the black box around it.<\/p>\n
3.)Push the Page button till you get to page 4.<\/p>\n
4.) Push F2 (should say “FmtDrv”).<\/p>\n
5.) Your Drive Format screen will appear. On the bottom of this screen are 2 options, “Physical Format”, and Surface Scan”. Turn on both of these options and hit F5.<\/p>\n
The length of the formatting will vary depending on the size of your hard drive. Once complete, you can recover any projects you need from your back-ups, and continue working.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","categories":[],"tags":[35608],"storecat":[],"itemids":[],"manufacturers":[33684],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n