Q: I know you often say that running Check Disk and Disk Defragmenter will help keep one's computer in shape. But what about other media? I have two external disk drives that I use for backups, and USB flash drives. I also have an iPod Nano and CompactFlash cards for my camera. Should Check Disk and Disk Defragmenter be run on these media, also?

A: Well, life gets complicated, doesn't it? Ten years ago, we had none of these things. Imagine what another 10 years will bring!

Assuming that your drives show up in My Computer, you should be able to run the utilities on them. Whether you would want to is another matter.

Drives become fragmented when you write to a file, then resave it. That shouldn't be much of a problem. However, you might get fragmentation with differential or incremental backups.

I see no reason why defragmentation should hurt your external hard drives. Same goes for Check Disk. However, before defragmenting, do an analysis of the drive. You might find it unnecessary.

To do that, click Start, My Computer. Right-click the drive and click Properties. Select the Tools tab. Click Defragment Now.

Highlight the drive and click Analyze. Even if it says defragmentation is unnecessary, you can still do it.

Running Check Disk occasionally also won't hurt anything. It is also accessed off the Tools tab. Click Check Now and select all options. Follow any instructions.

The other drives are more problematic. A

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flash drive is accessed the same way. Theoretically, at least, you can wear flash drives out. They're generally good for 10,000 reads and writes, according to manufacturers. So, doing extra work on them might cause problems.

If I really thought I had a problem, I'd probably copy the files off. Then, I'd do a quick format, rather than a thorough one.

To do that, go to My Computer and right-click the drive. Click Format. Check Quick Format, and click Start.

The quick format would leave the files on the drive. But it would break the links to them from the disk index. That tells the disk they aren't really there. When you reinstall the files, they should go into contiguous areas.

Check Disk works fine on a flash drive. Run Check Disk as you would on the external hard drives.

You can also use Check Disk on your Nano. When it comes to defragmentation, Apple recommends the iPod Updater .

I wouldn't worry about the CompactFlash cards. They should be formatted in the camera.

We rely so heavily on hard drives and flash memory to store our data. But both types of memory are fallible. To learn how to protect your data for a long time to come, read my tip .

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