Speeding up file browsing and access

You can speed up system access to a file and the system's browsing time through the files in several ways. So far, this book has already talked about defragmenting your drive, which will speed up accessing and browsing time. In addition, a few other things can be done to speed up how the file system works.

Making the file system run faster is easy. All you have to do is follow the next two sections, which will guide you through the steps of hacking the System Registry to change the file system settings. These settings will disable aspects of the file system that are not critical to the system and will help you with your system performance.

Before you go any further, be aware that the following speed tips for the file system will work only for the NTFS file system. If you do not know what file system your system is running on, you can go to My Computer and right-click your hard drive and select Properties. This will bring up the Local Disk (C:) Properties window, which will tell you the type of file system your hard drive is running. If your hard drive is running FAT32, these tips will not work for you.

In my opinion, NTFS is a far better file system. It has many advanced security features and also performs better on many machines. If you are still running FAT32, or for some odd reason your computer came preinstalled with FAT32, consider converting your hard disk to NTFS.

Converting your drive to NTFS is a snap. Open up Command Prompt by clicking the Start button and selecting Run. Type cmd in the box and click OK to start up it up. Then at a prompt, type in convert c: /fs:ntfs and press Enter to start. If you want to convert a different drive letter, just replace the c: with the drive letter that you want. For example, if you want to convert your d drive, then you will have to type convert d: /fs:ntfs. The actual conversion process will take a little while, especially on large drives. Keep in mind that once you convert to NTFS, you cannot convert back to FAT32.

Now that the requirements are cleared up, you are all ready to get started.