I always believed that if I was good to my PC, my PC would be good to me and so far it has always worked for me. I keep the processes running in the background to a minimum, programs which start at login time are prevented from running if I am not using them on a daily basis, and so on.
The thing that bugs me is that no matter what it seems that your PC is getting slower over time, or maybe I am getting faster but it seems that the performance is never the same after that first boot out of the box.
I was experimenting with some new Server OS on my home PC (the one I treat with respect, rub its processor and stroke for good luck) using VMWare and the first thing I do after installing some new software is using the Windows Defrag to reorganize my drive so the disk would seem "less busy". Since I have been doing that from the beginning of time using various defragmentation tools such as the one supplied with Windows and Diskeeper for example, my disks are in relative good condition.
A few months ago I ran into another defrag tool called PerfectDisk from Raxco, with people reporting some good reviews. I downloaded the trial and decided to purchase the software after the trial expired. It worked very nicely for me, even the discs that I used Diskeeper on were defragmented down to 0.01% fragmentation.
Now that is one part of the story, the other part is that I finally installed it on my office PC, that thing was so slow that it would take 2 minutes before the mouse would be able the pass the click events to an application, and it would take Outlook about 1 minute to start and allow me to do anything.
I installed PerfectDisk 2008 and did the first defragmentation run, wow, what a mess it is like finally moving the couch from the wall to clean up the dust, what a shocker. The first run made it noticeably better, after having setup the nightly defrag runs my work PC has found speed it had lost for so long. Outlook starts without hesitation and all programs start within a snap of the fingers during logon time so I can start quicker.
You can find more information on this product at http://www.raxco.com
All in all a great product if you want to keep your overall speed on your PC up.