

You would do this by clicking on the “View Report” button designated by the red box in Figure 5. Make it a habit to view the report so I can see how badly my hard drive is being used. The higher percentage that you are fragmented, the worse it is.įigure 5. When you click on the Analyze button, designated by the red box in Figure 4, the Defragmenter will scan the partition you have selected and give you a report on how badly it is fragmented. By default the first partition will be selected. Disk Defragmenter Startup Screenīefore you choose the Analyze or Defragment button, you should select the partition you want to work with, by clicking once on it. You will then be presented with a screen similar to Figure 4 below.įigure 4. We will discuss both ways below.Ĭlick once on the Disk Defragmenter as show above in Figure 1 to launch the program. One way is to use a Disk Defragmenter program and the other is to use an extra empty hard drive. There are two ways to defragment your hard drive. Notice how the entire file is located in one area and not split between multiple locations.

This allows the programs and data to run more efficiently and quickly as the operating system does not have to read from multiple locations.įigure 2 below shows an example of a file store in contiguous space.
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To solve this problem, software developers developed a type of program called a Disk Defragmenter.Its an application that reorganizes the data in the hard drive partitions so that the data allocation can be as contiguous as possible.The defragmenter will search your hard drive partition and move data from one location to another location, so that the files stored there are one contiguous piece, instead of being spread throughout multiple locations on the hard drive’s partition. Notice how File1 is stored in two locations which are not contiguous Now when you run this particular application its performance will be degraded because it has to be loaded from multiple locations on the hard drive.įigure 1 below shows an example of a fragmented le.

This is especially bad when installing new software on your computerīecause the program will now be installed over multiple locations on your hard drive. This causes the file to become fragmented. If the hard drive is heavily fragmented, there is the possibility that there will not be enough contiguous space available to store the file, and therefore the le will be broken up and stored in multiple locations on the hard drive. To store it in a section of contiguous space that will be large enough to accommodate the file. When a hard drive is fragmented, and the operating system wants to store a file on the hard drive, it attempts Now this works fine enough when the disk is new but as it gets older tto say so that many such filed have been stored and deleted in the hard drive.Now whenever a file is deleted it creates empty spaces in the hard drive.This process is called as fragmentation. it tries to store the file in one go continuously ,locations that are connecting without a break, space.

To understand how defragging works its necessary to know how data is stored on hard drive.Whenever data such as file is stored on the hard drive the operating system tries to store it contiguously i.e. Noticed a difference.Have you ever wondered why it acts so? You may have followed the advice and defragged your hard drive, and actually I am sure many of you have been told in the past to defrag your hard drives when you have noticed a slowĭown on your computer.
