Defragmenting your hard drive, why is it sometimes harmful? Disk defragmentation - why it is needed and how to do it, Windows programs and utilities How disk defragmentation helps
Defragmenting the hard drive on your PC, in this article we will figure out what this process is. Why do many people talk about it as an opportunity to speed up the computer? And also, why run defragmentation at intervals of several months and how will this actually affect the performance of the operating system?
And of course, I will not lose sight of the version of many users who “shout” on every forum that defragmentation for a computer is actually a very harmful process. I will tell you the truth and everything in my head will form a single, correct picture.
What is defragmentation?
Defragmentation is a process that allows you to “arrange the files stored on your hard drive into the most orderly structure, which in turn facilitates faster reading and writing of files”
And here, not even all confident PC users understand what is happening, but what should beginners do? Let's figure out once and for all what this cunning process is that allows you to speed up your computer.
Let's start with the fact that all the files that we write to the computer end up on the hard drive, where they are stored until we need them again. You need to know and understand that initially all your data is recorded in an orderly manner, one by one in "cells" hard drive, they are also represented as clusters. So what’s wrong with this, files are recorded in order and recorded, they don’t bother anyone.
This process takes a lot of time. It depends, of course, on the number of files on your PC, the density of the mess and the overall power of the computer. This will most likely take several hours.
Watch the video: a practical lesson on defragmenting a hard drive.
I hope after so much material and watching the video it became clear to you how and what needs to be done correctly. At least you definitely got the basic knowledge. In principle, this could be the end of the article, but still below I will answer another very important question.
Why is it harmful to defragment a computer in some cases?
Imagine the situation, you have been living with basic knowledge for several years now, periodically, you speed up your computer by doing defragmentation. And everything seems to be fine, but the day comes when on some forum or from friends you hear categorically: “Defragmentation of a hard drive is harmful.” Panic begins, someone simply argues and says that I always do this and nothing, everything works fine.
What to do in this case, who to believe, this is the decision I will try to convey to you. But in fact, every statement can be true. But within the framework of a specific situation. What's the catch and what are the situations?
Yes, everything is simple really. There are two types of hard drives, and in one version defragmentation is useful and necessary, but in the second it is unnecessary and even harmful. Below I will simply write which disks can be accelerated and which are not necessary. All you have to do is find out what type of hard drive is in the current computer configuration and make one of two possible decisions.
So if you have:
- HDD format hard drive - defragmentation is useful and necessary.
- SSD format hard drive - defragmentation is unnecessary and harmful.
If something doesn’t work out or there are new questions, I’m waiting for you in the comments.
The hard drive is one of the most important components of a computer, but not all users pay due attention to it. If the processor, video card, RAM and other components fail, they can be replaced quite simply, whereas if the drive breaks down, the computer owner will lose all his data, which obviously no one wants. To avoid hard drive failure, you need to carefully monitor it and defragment it regularly.
What is disk defragmentation
The defragmentation process is very simple and very important, but many people forget about the need for it. It is the organization of files on the hard drive in such a way that the operating system can access them more easily and quickly when requested.
While the hard drive is operating, new information constantly appears on it. The user downloads files from the Internet, installs programs and games, creates new documents and performs a number of other tasks. When information is stored on a hard drive, it occupies a certain number of free clusters on it. At the time of deleting, changing, copying files, the clusters are cleared, but free space is formed between one and another file on the hard drive. Disk defragmentation is necessary to organize the files on the disk so that they follow each other sequentially, and there are no free clusters left between them.
Disk defragmentation on Windows is necessary because:
Some users know about the need to defragment, but do not do it. This is due to the fact that this process is very lengthy, and organizing files on a large storage device can take up to ten hours. At the same time, the procedure time can be significantly reduced; to do this, it is enough to perform it monthly, as recommended by hard drive manufacturers. The more often you defragment, the less data on the drive will have to be moved, and therefore this process will happen faster.
Important: Defragmentation is only necessary on spinning head hard drives, while it is not necessary on SSD drives. The process of defragmenting a solid-state drive will only lead to a reduction in the number of rewrite cycles to it, but will not provide a performance increase.
How to defragment a disk
To defragment a disk, you need to run the corresponding process. The Windows operating system contains a special tool that allows you to defragment your hard drive. Unfortunately, it is not perfect, and in most cases it is more convenient to use third-party utilities. Different programs contain their own algorithms for defragmenting the drive. Below we will give an example of several such applications and tell you how to perform the work of organizing clusters using the system's tools.
Defragmenting a hard drive using Windows
If you're wondering how to defragment a disk in Windows 10 or earlier versions of the operating system, it's quite easy to do. To run the standard defragmentation tool you need to:
Please note that you can also configure “Schedule optimization” in this menu item. When selecting the appropriate item, you must specify the frequency of the process and the hard drive/drives that will be subjected to it. After this, the system will automatically defragment the drive according to the selected schedule.
Hard drive defragmentation programs
There are dozens of applications that allow you to defragment your hard drive. Each of them has its pros and cons. Some are better suited for large hard drives or drives that are installed on servers, while others are good for home use. Below we suggest considering a couple of free programs for defragmenting your hard drive.
The simplest and most convenient application for defragmenting a hard drive on a home computer is Defraggler. The free version of the program, which can be downloaded from the official website of the developers, does not have wide functionality, but it copes with its main task.
The application is officially localized into Russian, and it allows you to defragment not only the entire disk, but also an individual program or folder. The program also provides an option for quick disk defragmentation.
Auslogics Disk Defrag Free is a free version of the application of the same name from Auslogics. You can also download it from the official website of the developers. The application is slightly more functional than Defraggler, and it does not have a Russian language, which makes it more difficult to work with. At the same time, the program has a number of functions that are not available in the official Windows hard drive optimization tool and in the Defraggler application.
In this material, you will become familiar with such an important maintenance operation as defragmentation. Many novice users (and not only) often neglect this function, which over time leads to an increase in read/write time and, accordingly, a decrease in computer performance. But before answering the question, what is disk defragmentation and how to do it, let's look at the principle of writing files to disk.
How are files written to the hard drive?
To put it simply, it is not written to the disk in its entirety, but is “folded out” into cluster cells, which represent the minimum space for storing information on the hard disk. Those. the file is split into pieces corresponding to the cluster size.
Disk structure: (A) track (B) geometric sector (C) track sector (D) cluster
Initially, as long as there is enough free space on the disk, the file is written to the clusters sequentially - one after the other. As the storage medium fills up, there may be a shortage of sequential clusters (especially in the case of recording large files), in which case the system begins to look for free cells and distribute parts of the file among them, which takes more time. The same is true when reading a file written in scattered clusters - it takes time to find all parts of the file on the disk and assemble it. It turns out that fragments of the file are scattered here and there - it is fragmented, and there can be many such files. When you delete a fragmented file, empty scattered clusters remain in its place, into which other files will again be scattered when they are written. All this significantly reduces computer performance and hard drive resource.
What is disk defragmentation?
Disk defragmentation is designed to collect scattered parts of files into continuous, sequential clusters as much as possible. We can say that the system will try to assemble the fragmented file into a single whole. Empty scattered clusters will also be connected into serial chains during this process. In addition, defragmentation will move most of the data closer to the beginning of the disk. The defragmentation operation speeds up program launches and data loading. It is recommended to remove unused programs and data before starting the process.
How often should you defragment?
The frequency of defragmentation depends on the size of your hard drive, how much you use it, how full it is, and how often you install and uninstall programs.
How to defragment a disk?
Let's look at the defragmentation process using Windows 7 as an example, as the most common operating system at the time of publication of the article. The Windows system has a standard program with which you can analyze the selected local disk to determine the need to defragment it and directly start the process itself. The fastest way to run it is:
Open folder " Computer" Start—>Computer.
Select local disk. By clicking on it with the right mouse button, call up the context menu, in which select the item “ Properties" At the top of the properties window, select the " Service" and click on the button " Run defragmentation»
In the defragmenter window that opens, click on the “ Analyze disk", after which the process of checking the disk for the degree of fragmentation will begin. After finishing the analysis, the program will show how fragmented the disk is. If the degree of fragmentation is above 15%, you must press the “ Disk Defragmenter" and wait for the program to finish.
The defragmentation program can also be launched using the Main Menu. To do this, click on the button " Start", select from the menu " All programs«, « Standard«, « Service" and left-click on the icon " Disk Defragmenter»
Don't forget to carry out this procedure regularly, and your hard drive will be pleased with its speed. In conclusion, it should be noted that for high-speed solid-state SSD drives, defragmentation is not needed, because they have a different principle of storing information. SSD drives will be discussed in the following materials.
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Various types of information are stored, changed or deleted on a hard drive, flash drive or any other storage medium; if this happens without subsequent defragmentation, then fragmentation occurs. That is, if there is a gap between the end of one content block and the beginning of another, then this means fragmentation. This concept should be understood as a chaotic order of storage (dispersion) of files on media.
This occurs due to the fact that after the first deletion of a file that previously occupied a certain space on the media, there remains space that is not filled with anything. New files fill the subsequent space. Thus, it turns out that a kind of gap appears between the files. It is impossible to see it without special software.
Defragmentation, in turn, allows you to organize files on the media and after the procedure is completed, they will be stored exactly one after another, without any gaps. It is worth noting that there are several types of defragmentation, these are: complete (after the procedure is completed, the files will be located as close to each other as possible) and partial defragmentation (there may be spaces between the files). It is not necessary to defragment the disk if there are not many spaces between blocks (files).
Defragmentation programs
To defragment the disk, special software is used, which is available in all versions of Windows operating systems. To do this, just open “My Computer,” right-click on the drive you want to defragment and select “Properties.” Next, you should go to the “Service” tab, where you can see several items: “Disk Check”, “Disk Defragmentation”, and also “Backup”. To start the defragmentation procedure, you need to open the appropriate section and click on the button to start the procedure.
In addition, specialized software, such as the Auslogic Disk Defrag program, can be used for the same purposes. The key feature of this program is a fairly simple and intuitive interface that even a novice PC user can handle. All you need to do is download this program on the Internet (distributed), install it and run it. When the program window opens, you should select the partition that will be subject to defragmentation and start using the Start button. The process itself can take from half an hour to several hours, depending on the contamination and capacity of your hard drive.
The article mentioned such a problem as data fragmentation. In this article I will consider all the issues related to fragmentation, as well as ways to combat it in as much detail as possible.
What is hard drive fragmentation and what problems does it bring with it?
When writing a file to your hard drive, there is a possibility that the file will not fit into the space allocated to it and the operating system will split it into logical parts. This division of a file into parts is called file fragmentation. Disk or file system fragmentation refers to the percentage of files that are fragmented.
The most severely fragmented files are those that change size frequently, such as databases and program logs, as well as large files, such as movies.
The more fragmented the file system is, the slower the computer processes information on the hard drive. And due to the fact that the hard drive is one of the most bottlenecks in the performance of a PC, with increasing fragmentation the performance of the entire computer can significantly suffer.
It is worth paying attention to the fact that the more full the hard drive is, the more the files on it begin to fragment. To prevent fragmentation from reaching a critical level, do not fill the hard drive partition to more than 80%.
What is hard drive defragmentation?
Defragmentation of a computer is a process in which fragments of files are removed or at least their number is reduced.
How to defragment a hard drive?
There are a huge number of programs designed for defragmentation. Each of them has its own advantages and disadvantages. However, I will not name them, because the Windows operating system has a standard utility designed for defragmentation, and starting from Windows XP it works quite stable and well.
You can run the program: RMB on the disk -> Disk properties -> Performance -> Defragmentation
In addition, there is a very reliable method of defragmentation - copying. If you copy all the information onto some kind of media, and then back at once, then all the files will no longer be fragmented. But this method has all kinds of problems. The first is that you must have media with free space that is at least equal to the occupied disk space required by defragmentation. The second is the inability to make a copy on the working system partition.
Frequently asked questions about hard drive defragmentation
How often should you defragment your hard drive?
There are no clear deadlines. Defragmentation must be performed as fragmented files appear. I recommend setting the defragmenter to run automatically once a week.
What can I do to defragment less often?
Just defragment less often. 🙂 Or don’t work with your PC’s hard drive.
Do I need to defragment my solid state drives (SSDs)?
No. SSDs are immune to fragmentation, but defragmentation increases wear and tear on them.
Do I need to defragment the flash drive?
No. The reason is the same as for SSD drives.
How to defragment a flash drive?
If you still want to defragment, then copy all the information from the flash drive to your computer, format the flash drive, and then copy all the files back.
If you have any questions, ask them in the comments and I will be happy to answer them.
