Defragmenting the hard drive with proper guidance will be a very useful process to impact an improvement in the performance of your computer system.
It is an operation that is sometimes necessary to put an order in the mechanical hard drives in which you generally write and rewrite regularly since the way of storing information in hard drives, tends to leave fragments in them that over time can slow them down.
If you notice that your hard disk is slow, you have to do a manual disk defragmentation. To solve the slower performance of your system there is a tool named “disk defragmenter” in the Windows system.
I will begin by clarifying What is defragmenting the hard drive? How do you do it? Why should you do it? mentioning exactly what types of disk it has to be done on. Then I will guide you through the process to defragment the hard drive of your Windows 10 computer.
So, basically,
What does means defragmenting the hard disk drive?
When transferring, saving, or deleting any file and application on the computer, the hard disk drives fragment the data of the file into several parts by using available spaces in different areas of the disk.
Over time, this fragmentation of the HDD negatively affects the storage drive, causing the entire computer to run slower and jeopardizing the life of the hard drive. For this reason, it is important that you defragment your hard drive from time to time.
After defragmenting your hard drive makes it possible to free memory space. As you can see the below image conveying the difference between fragmented and defragmented disks.
Not only this after the fragmented data is reorganized on the hard drive, but also the disks run smoother and more efficiently. As you can see differentiate the disk with fragmentation.
So, let’s begin with the steps that defragment your hard drive in Windows 10 effectively.
Cleaning up disks Before defragmenting your Hard Drive
Pro Tip: Before performing defragmentation, it is advisable to clean the disks from unnecessary files. It often frees up enough space and prepares the disk for better optimization.
5 Easy Steps to Clean up Disk:
- Type “Disk Cleanup” in the search bar and open the corresponding result.
- Select your hard drive and check the boxes that you want to clean and confirm the selection with “OK”.
- Windows 10 automatically estimate the amount of data to clean up. You also have the option to choose and erase files manually.
- Select the unnecessary files you want to delete and confirm with “OK “.
- Follow the same steps with your HDD partitions so you can free up disk space.
7 Steps to Defragment the Hard Drive:
1. Search “Defragment and Optimize Drives” in the search bar and open the result.
2. Now, the defragmentation application opens, Here you will see a new window “Optimize Drives” showing you the partitions of your hard drives that you can fragment.
3. The next thing you have to do is click on the hard drive you want to defragment.
4. And at the bottom, you will find the option “Analyze” to know whether or not the disk needs to be defragmented.
5. Click the “Analyze” button, and wait a bit until a certain percentage defragmented appears. Enter your administrator password (if asked).
6. Once the process is finished, it will show you the percentage of disk fragmentation, if the percentage rate is higher than 10% you should defragment the disk.
7. Click on the Optimize button to proceed to defragment your hard drive, the program will automatically start the defragmentation process.
Important Points to remember while defragmenting your hard drive:
How to schedule hard drive defragmentation?
The defragmentation tool in Windows 10 and 8 allows you to schedule defragmentation monthly, weekly, or even daily.
Although the option to defragment the hard disk automatically will guarantee that this process takes place, the performance of your computer might be affected; as it will consume hardware resources of your computer if you are working with it at that point.
If you do not like repeating this process, you make the process automatic, To do this, follow these steps:
1. Re-enter the defragmenter following the same steps 1 and 2 above.
2. In the “Optimize Drives” window you will find the option to “Change settings”.
3. A dialog box will be displayed named “Optimization Schedule“.
4. Tick “Run on Schedule” and then select the frequency: daily, weekly or monthly (some recommend the option of doing it once a week, so it would be weekly).
5. Finally, choose the drives to which you will apply these changes and press the OK button.
FAQs
Is it helpful to defragmenting the hard disk drive?
Carrying out a defragmentation process will help you so that all the files can be joined in the same place, that is, all the data will be compacted so that the Windows operating system will eliminate all those empty spaces between the stored files, It will help improve the performance and speed of your computer.
How often should you defragment your hard disk?
To answer this question, you need to consider how often you use your computer. If you download applications, games, movies, and music constantly, then we recommend defragmenting at least once a week. If your computer is mainly used for Internet surfing, then you can do it once a month.
Can I defragment in MacOS?
Operating systems such as macOS do not tend to fragment mechanical disks as much, so they do not need to defragment hard drives either.
Is it ok to defragment the hard drive daily?
If you download and install a lot of programs, videos, and other files on a daily basis then the weekly defragmentation that Windows 10 performs may not be sufficient. In that case, this period should be shortened.
Do SSD needs defragmentation?
Solid-state drives types like SATA, M.2 SATA, PCIe NVMe, mSATA, don’t need to be defragmented. Moreover, performing defragmentation can shorten the lifespan of such disks.
Conclusion
Now you know all the necessary steps so that you can defragment the hard drive in Windows 10 quickly and without complications.
We found out what defragmentation is and what it is for. The defragmentation process assists speed with increasing your computer, so be sure to start this process on time, but remember that running defragmentation too often will shorten the life of your disk.
Obviously, I suggest doing it weekly, in this way your desktop or laptop will stay optimized. I hope the article “How to defragment your hard disk effectively” enhanced your computer performance.
