Posted 08/04/09 at 06:44:30 PM by The Maximum PC Staff

I recall that Maximum PC advises against defragmenting flash drives, such as the ones in an iPod. Does that include solid state drives, like in the Eee PC?

Read on to see the answer to Aaron's question.

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Posted 06/06/08 at 04:13:32 PM by The Maximum PC Staff

In the PDF archive of the June 2008 issue, you can find:

• Upgrading your OEM Machine
• The MaximumPC Guide to Home Automation
• The Vista Defrag Challenge
• How To: Create a Personal Internet Radio Station
• Awesome Product Reviews, including the Alienware Area-51 m15x
• Ask the Doctor
• Rig of the Month
• The Watchdog
• And a whole lot more!

Click the big giant cover image to the right to download the PDF archive today!

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Posted 06/05/08 at 06:32:29 PM by David Murphy

Fragmentation forces the drive head to jump all over the place to find the bits and pieces of files whenever you access them. Defragmentation, then, is the means by which these files are realigned into contiguous chunks. Windows Vista does this automatically, only the slow speed at which it defrags makes us wonder: Is the time spent worth the supposed performance payoff? And do third-party defragmenters, free or otherwise, do a better job? Should you spend money on third-party defrag tools? Our extensive experiments put commercial utilities (and Vista's built-in solution) to the test!

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Posted 01/07/08 at 04:39:55 PM by Christopher Null

We can't make Vista perfect, but our guide to tweaking the OS will certainly make it much more tolerable.

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