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Deep within your computer lies the hard drive, and within it are the keys to everything your machine does. Sure, your processor and graphics card and memory and so forth are a more visible part of performance, but the hard drive is what tells all the various parts of the machine how to work together. It doesn't just keep your information stored and filed — in many ways, it serves as the heart of the machine. Without it, your computer is nothing more than a very expensive and pretty paperweight.

Unfortunately, hard drives are also among the most vulnerable parts of the computer. Within the hard drive are spinning disks called platters, moving at high velocity and vulnerable to numerous sources of damage. Aside from their magnetic nature — the reason for the old warning to keep magnets away from your computer, which is still excellent advice — all it takes is a few particles of sand to creep in for the disks to get scratched and harmed.  And while drives aren't expensive to replace, doing so is labor-intensive and requires an intimate familiarity with your machine, something that not everyone possesses or even wants.

So let's take a look at a couple of ways to help ensure you're doing all you can to keep the core healthy.

When the heat's onImagine for a second that every time you thought about something, you ran the risk of cooking your brain. It probably sounds kind of ridiculous, but that's exactly what a computer does when you turn it on. A hard drive's greatest enemy is heat, and that's something computers produce in spades.

The whirring of a fan every time you start the machine up is just the start of your machine's long battle against overheating. This fan and any other form of cooling devices serve as heat sinks, devices introduced to help move the heat generated away from the computer components and into the surrounding air.

As a result, it's a good idea to make sure all of the vents on the computer are unobstructed. Usually, these will be located on the back of the machine and possibly on the top. If you're not sure, turn the computer on and hold your hand about half an inch away from what you think is a vent; you should feel a soft breeze. Not only should these vents be kept clear of dust and debris (a can of compressed air is advisable), try to avoid having them pressed up against a wall or otherwise blocked off. Even with the fans running, if there's no path for hot air to escape, vents won't be able to accomplish much.

Keeping your computer free of heat-trapping obstructions is also a good idea, as most cases are designed to dissipate a certain amount of heat directly into the air. If possible, try to have about an inch of space between the computer and any sort of insulating surface. Open space is best for your machine's health; be wary of desks that have computer cubbies with just enough space for a computer to sit within, as it may very well wind up exacerbating heat problems.

Lastly, if you have a laptop, there are several aftermarket cooling pads sold that will draw extra heat away from the machine as it dissipates. These are a fine investment to cool off your computer, but avoid any other sort of external heat dissipation techniques.  A desktop computer needs for its hard drive to be in a place that the fans will blow over it and help remove any operating heat. If you or someone else opens the case and tools around with what's inside the machine, make sure the path of air isn't inadvertently blocked off from the very component you're trying to protect.

Neat and tidy organization
Keeping your hard drive nice and cool might help extend its life, but it won't improve the speed at which your machine runs. For that, you'll need to keep an eye on your hard drive's fragmentation.

Picture your computer's hard drive as a drawer.  As you save files, install programs, modify things, and so forth, your computer saves them wherever it finds space, just as you might toss everything into a drawer on your desk without too much organization. Over time, this can result in the information for vital programs being scattered all across the physical disk, causing your computer to run more slowly as it searches for vital bits of data.  Defragmentation is the equivalent of dumping out the contents of the drawer and sorting them all, so that you know exactly where everything is.

Macintosh users have a bit of an edge in this department in terms of maintenance — OSX uses a specialized file system designed to curtail fragmentation at the time a file is modified.  On the downside, fragmentation that does occur requires a third-party solution to address.  Windows users have a built-in defragmentation utility that can be accessed with ease.

Double-click the My Computer icon on the desktop, or go to Start > Computer. Right-click on the hard drive, then select Properties, and navigate to the Tools tab. The defragmentation button should be right in the middle of three separate options. Click on the button that says "Defragment now" to open the tool and begin the procedure.

Defragmenting your drives
The first step is to determine if your drive needs a defragmentation. Click the Analyze Disk button, and your computer will run a quick series of tests to determine how fragmented the files are. Anything below 20% is usually fine and does not require a full defragmentation, although you can still run one if you wish. Newer computers are less likely to have fragmentation, while older computers and those with more files have a higher chance of requiring the process.

Click Defragment Disk to start the defragmenting procedure. Your computer will analyze again quickly, and then begin moving files to compress their physical location on the hard drive. This process is very slow and is the sort of thing best left running overnight rather than done while busy. Once the process is finished, however, you should notice that the computer is able to load files and programs more quickly.

Keeping your hard drive clean and cool might not be the flashiest thing to do with your computer, but it has the decisive advantage of making your machine last much longer and run better in the process.  Next week, we're going to be examining another core concept for your computer: memory.