Defragmenting Prior to Using FIPS

Before you actually use FIPS, you must defragment the drive partition. Defragmentation is necessary prior to running FIPS because FIPS can shrink a Windows partition only if a continuous area of empty space is available. The defragmentation process rearranges your files so that they are all stored one immediately after another toward the beginning of the partition. This leaves all the unused space near the end empty, where FIPS can trim it away and make it available to other operating systems like Linux.

Launch the Windows defragmentation tool by following these steps:

step1.	Double-click the My Computer icon on your Windows desktop or select My Computer from your Start menu. This will open the Windows Explorer and display icons for each of the storage devices in your system.
step2.	Right-click the icon representing the hard drive you want to defragment; choose Properties from the pop-up context menu.
step3.	Select the Tools tab from the dialog box that appears.
steo4.	Click the Defragment Now button. A progress indicator shows that your hard drive is being defragmented. When Windows indicates that defragmentation has finished, exit the defragmentation tool.