Defragging why

Everything gets moved around and separated or fragmented and your computer has to work harder to find everything it needs. When you finish doing the laundry, you usually sort your clothing back into organized piles so they can go back into your closet or dresser. When you defrag your hard drive, your computer is doing something similar. It's taking all of the data and reorganizing it so your computer can find things more easily and make the most of its available space.

Couple of points of clarification. Defrag CAN free up some space in 2 ways. So when the file is defragged the only freespace left is at the end of the file. They perform defrag in several discrete steps.

Strange, unexpected, things can happen such as defrag programs abending unexpectedly. I defragmented my drive and it improved the speed a lot. I used the trial version of Diskeeper09 which a friend suggested. Its really easy to use as its automatic. My personal opinion is that defragging daily is way unnecessary…maybe monthly at most? Just my 2 cents.

Leo, is it safe to defrag an encrypted portable hard drive? If it is safe, should the drive be un-encrypted first — before starting the defrag process? Great advice, but.. It is a bad habit to leave your computer on overnight. Not only does it harm the environment by unnecessarily draining electricity, you harm the computer by having it constantly powered on. Give your computer a break, and save yourself some money. Turn it OFF when you are not using it. Hi Leo Good article and mostly good posts.

But instead of putting my 2 cents worth in Europe now too!! I would like to ask one question which has intrigued me for some time now, as you have dealt more or less with this question before. How can defragging, even once a week wear the HDD out more than the Head flying round like a maniac every time the computer is run. I like to chop videos up and splice parts together to see what I can make and that scatters parts of files all over.

So I disabled it and installed Auslogics Disk Defrag, which does the same job that the Win 7 defragger does in about 3 minutes. I provide tech support to a dozen families, and do the same on their computers. In short, I recommend against using the Win 7 defragger and instead using the Auslogics product, which is free. Wow, OK, defragging… I can finally explain it to easirer my family and freinds, Thanks again for the continuing pearls of wisdom Leo!!!

Every user will be different, and most users will differ from time to time. When using this I just click Analise first. If the figures are low I do not defrag and therefore reduce HDD wear and tear. If the figures are high I do defrag and paradoxically also reduce HDD wear and tear.

Whole thing just takes a little practice. When that done try out the advanced options. These to me speed up the comp. Luck All!!! Use auslogics on demand defragger, no schedules for me. I never practiced the idea of leaving anything on when I am not using it and my hard drive is just fine for now. While theoretically it should be possible by shuffling individual sectors around, most tools require enough free space to contain at least the largest file being defragmented.

Dom I believe when Leo said shuffling sectors around was referring to shuffling the contents of those sectors. Not an error, just another way of looking at it. If Windows 7 runs defragging automatically once a week, does that mean that if you buy a solid state hard drive you should turn the automatic defragmenting off, if you can?

But I cannot analyze it or defrag it. Is there a reason for that happening? Should I be able to defrag the C drive? And why does it keep increasing like that?

However, when I click on the C Drive, even to analyze it, nothing at all happens. The same for when I try to defrag it. Ahmad Mujtaba says:. June 16, at pm.

June 25, at pm. Tom says:. August 22, at pm. Matthew omoh prosper says:. September 5, at pm. John R says:. October 18, at am. Kostas says:. December 19, at pm. January 24, at pm. Felix says:. October 8, at pm. December 26, at pm. January 30, at pm. Bobby Land says:. Follow these quick steps to defrag your hard drive.

Select the local disk volume that you want to defragment by right-clicking it, then click Properties. On the Tools tab, click Defragment Now , then click Defragment. If you want to avoid the hassle, look into upgrading your computer by replacing your hard drive with a solid state drive. Learn how to install an SSD in your desktop here. All rights reserved.