What is hard drive fragmentation? The most effective way to defragment a hard drive

Hard drive fragmentation causes a lot of inconvenience to your work, but defragmentation is often overlooked by people. The following article will help you better understand hard drive fragmentation, as well as guide you on how to defragment most effectively.

What is hard drive fragmentation?

Hard drive fragmentation is a phenomenon where the data of files is scattered all over the drive. At that time, the reader has to move a lot and continuously to reach different locations of those data pieces, making data retrieval slower , and possibly even crashing .

Causes of hard drive fragmentation

The phenomenon of fragmentation occurs due to the principle of backing up and deleting data of the hard drive. When you copy new data in, it will write to the location immediately after the last data on the drive. This means, if you delete a file, the data at that location will be left blank , however, the new file will not be written to that empty location, but jumps to the end of the drive to write in.

Over and over again , erasing old data, and then writing new data in, more and more space is created, and those spaces are only filled when the last places of the drive are full. If the newly written file is larger than that space, the excess data will jump into the next space, causing the hard drive to fragment.

How does hard drive fragmentation affect the computer?

Hard drive fragmentation makes data access slow, sometimes even jerky, laggy, or even crashes.

• In terms of work , hard drive fragmentation will cause delays, as well as more or less affect your work performance .
• From a computer perspective, hard drive fragmentation will cause the data reader to move a lot and continuously, affecting the life of components .

The most effective way to defragment a hard drive

Using software

Currently, there are many software that support effective defragmentation, the article will introduce you to 2 popular , relatively effective and easy-to-use software.

Defraggler

First of all, Defraggler software, one of the effective defragmentation software today, is provided by Piriform company .

The advantage of the software is its simple interface , which supports both Vietnamese language, so it is easy to use. At the same time, the software will allow you to defragment each file individually without scanning the entire drive. This will make the defragmentation process faster and more focused on the files you want.

In addition, Defraggler also allows you to schedule the defragmentation to happen automatically .

Smart Defrag

Smart Defrag is also one of the typical software that effectively supports defragmentation.

The advantage of the software is that it runs parallel defragmentation and computer optimization processes. Then, the files that you often use will be prioritized for defragmentation and efficient arrangement , convenient for data retrieval.

In addition, the software supports boot-up defragmentation , which reduces the boot time of the machine. Besides, you can choose to automatically turn off your computer after defragmentation is complete, so you can comfortably leave to do other work without waiting.

Do not use software

On Windows 7

Step 1: Right- click the drive to be defragmented and select Properties .

Step 2: At the Tools tab, select Defragment Now…

Step 3: Select the corresponding drive partition (C, D, E…) then click Analyze disk to perform the check.

Step 4: After the analysis is complete, click Defragment disk to defragment the drive. You can also stop the process by selecting Stop Operation .

On Windows 8

Step 1: Go to Settings > Control Panel with the Charm bar on the right hand side of the screen.

Step 2: In the Control Panel window that appears, select Administrative Tools .

Step 3: A new window appears, find the Defragment and Optimize Drives application and open it.

Step 4: Then, at the Optimize Drives window, select the drive that you want to defrag and click Optimize .

On Windows 10

Step 1: In the search bar on the taskbar, search for the keyword ” defrag ” and select the results Defragment and Optimize Drives appear.

Step 2: Select the drive you want to defrag and click Optimize .

Hope this article has provided you with a lot of useful information. Good luck with your defragmentation!