If you’ve spent any amount of time sitting behind a keyboard, you’ve heard about the need to defragment your hard disk drive (hard drive for short). Beginning with Windows 95, Microsoft released a tool as part of its operating system, aptly called, “Disk Defragmenter”. Windows Vista and all operating systems since include an option for scheduling automatic “defrags,” whereas the program only ran manually before. If you have a computer running Windows 8 or Windows 10, you’ll find that it’s called “Defragment and Optimize Drives”. New name, same great features. So how exactly does a hard drive become fragmented, and what does defragmentation accomplish? Let’s take a look under the hood.
To understand fragmentation, we need to have a very basic understanding of hard disk drives. When you save files, they’re stored on your hard drive. As files become modified and deleted, once continuous tracks in the hard drive develop “gaps,” with pieces of one file in one place on the hard drive, and the rest of that file in another spot. For our purposes here, it isn’t necessary to understand the geometry of hard drives, just appreciate that hard drives are mechanical, and that it takes longer for the heads inside the drive to read and write data to the hard drive when files are separated. I like to use this example: My mother did this, and now my wife does the same thing. When they say you often marry your mother, believe me folks, it happens. Anyway, the two of them like to organize the clothes in their closet by color. When you know you want to wear a black shirt, it saves a lot of time going through all the black shirts at one time instead of searching throughout your entire closet. Essentially, Disk Defragmenter does the same thing. Data grouped together is accessed much more efficiently than data spread throughout a hard drive. When used regularly, your hard drive will be able to retrieve and save files more quickly, and the time it takes to start your computer will be reduced.
Now that we know why disk defragmentation is important, let’s run through how to perform it. In Windows Vista or Windows 7, click “Start”, then “All Programs” then “Accessories”, then “System Tools”, and finally, “Disk Defragmenter”. When the program launches, you’ll see a table listing the drives on your computer, when Disk Defragmenter was last run, and the current status which shows how fragmented the drive is and whether it should be optimized. Almost 100% of the time, the drive you should be most concerned with is the drive that says “OS”. That’s your operating system (Windows Vista, 7, 8, or 10). Click on “OS” followed by “Defragment disk” and defragmentation will begin. The progress will be displayed on the column to the right. When Disk Defragmenter is finished, the “Progress” heading will change to “Current status”, and the date of “Last Run” will change to today’s date. In Windows 8 or 10, search for “Defragment and optimize drives” by clicking the magnifying glass in 8 or typing in the field to the right of the “Start” button in 10. Click the first suggestion that comes up. The same steps apply as in the earlier version, but this time click “Optimize” after clicking on your “OS”. In any version, click “Change settings” to schedule a time you’d like the program to run automatically. Weekly is the default choice, but you can also select daily or monthly. Click “Choose” to select the drives you’d like to be optimized, and click “OK” when you’re finished.
Disk defragmentation is another part of a successful maintenance plan for your P.C. Our lives are on our hard drives, so it’s very important to do all we can to keep them healthy. If you have a solid state drive (SSD), do not run Disk Defragmenter or Defragment and Optimize Drives. They don’t see any optimization, and can actually be damaged if run. For what they cost, you don’t want to be replacing too many of them!