You can choose to defrag all disks, or select disks. Your computer will then defrag regularly on the day and time you've selected for the schedule. Yes, you have to have the PC on for the scheduled event to run. Yes No. Not Helpful 1 Helpful 2.
When you erase files, you create holes where the file data was previously stored. It's because of these holes that there is a need to sometimes defragment an HDD. It's best is to erase files you don't need before you defragment. With a larger percentage of free space, the defrag software has more options to find alternative solutions and the more continuous free space will be directly available after the defrag.
The cost of fragmented file accesses is very much lower for an SSD, and the defragmentation process creates a lot of wear on the SSD flash media. Not Helpful 0 Helpful 0. Include your email address to get a message when this question is answered.
Prior to running a manual defrag, check the schedule within the main Disk Defragmenter window to see whether a defrag has recently been completed.
The schedule will display the time and date of the most recent defrag process. Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0. Click on "Analyze Disk" within the main Disk Defragmenter window prior to running a manual defrag. The Analyze Disk process will inform you whether or not your computer needs to be defragmented at that particular time. If you are using a computer at a workplace or on a public network, you may need an administrator password to run the Windows 7 Disk Defragmenter.
Schedule an automatic defrag process to run during times your computer is on, but not in use, such as during your lunch break or near the end of your work day. Submit a Tip All tip submissions are carefully reviewed before being published. You Might Also Like How to. How to. Co-authors: 4. Updated: March 29, Categories: Windows 7.
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New Pages How to. Watch Articles How to. This post will show you the answers and also provide you another program to extend partition so as to improve hard drive performance. When searching how to improve hard disk performance or computer performance on the internet, users are always suggested defragment hard drive. Well then, what is hard disk defragmentation? How does fragment appear on hard disk? How does defragmentation improve performance? How to make effective disk defragmentation?
How to defrag Windows 7? Maybe, some of you have a great understanding of one or more questions, but most people just know little or even nothing about defragment hard drive.
Therefore, we compose this post by answering these questions one after another. Defragmentation is much related to file systems on electromechanical disk drives, and it is the process of picking up all pieces of data which spread across a partition it is also called volume and then putting these pieces together.
Suppose: there are 10 clusters in one partition, and a file uses the first, the third, and the ninth cluster since one cluster cannot hold all content of the file, like this:. That is to say File 1 consists of 3 pieces, and each cluster holds one piece. Defragment hard drive is the process of putting these 3 pieces of data together so as to make a file saved in continuous space, as the following picture shows:. Now users would know how disk defragmentation works. But at this time some users may ask why a file could be saved to several different locations on a drive rather than stored in one place.
Actually, this is our second question of how fragments are generated. Generally, when we are saving files to a new partition or volume, all files will be saved continuously, for example:. However, after one of these files is deleted, for instance File 3 is deleted, space occupied by this file will be marked available for new files, and file system can save any new file to the newly released space even if there is unused space left at the end of the drive file system just allocates space at random.
Definitely, space released by File 3 cannot hold all content of the new file, and file system has to allocate more space for this file from other released space or unused space. Thus we may get the following result:. The new file is made up of 2 parts: one is after File 2, and the other is after File 5. Under this situation, we say data fragments are generated. Actually, apart from deleting and writing operation, editing or modifying an old file may cause fragments. For example, the original size of File 1 is 20MB, but then we added some content to this file, making it 30MB now.
That is to say, extra 10MB space is required. At this time, if there is no free space available after File 1, file system needs to allocate 10MB unused space from other places for the added content, which means File 1 will spread across the drive and data fragments are generated, too. Once fragments reach to a certain degree, users need to defrag the disk or defrag computer. If not, hard disk performance would be affected largely.
There are lots of benefits to make defragment hard drive, and in this post, we just list major 3. As we know, all files saved on a hard disk here we refer to mechanical hard disk rather than SSD are accessed via the magnetic head. If a file consists of multiple fragments, the hard disk especially magnetic head of the disk will do much extra work.
To be specific, when we are accessing a file which is saved in 2 or more different locations, the head needs to move here and there so as to read all fragments of the file, thus increasing seek time.
However, after defragment hard drive, all pieces of the file will be gathered to one extent so that the head only needs to work in one extent. Naturally, our computer would run much more quickly since a lot of seek time are reduced.
In addition, defragmentation helps the most when it comes to startup times. Therefore, speeding up computer is the biggest improvement brought by defragmentation. We have said the magnetic head should move here and there to read a fragmented data. That is to say, if there are a slew of fragmented data saved on a volume or partition, the head needs to do much more movements. With reading and writing data frequently, our hard disk may be physically damaged after a long time.
That is to say, its service time could be reduced. However, if we are doing defragment hard drive on the volume at this time, the read-write operation will be reduced largely since all fragmented files will be rearranged and reunited. In other words, hard disk service time could be increased. In order to make full use of hard disk space and optimize disk performance, many users plan to do disk and partition management, such as extend small partition, change cluster size, convert file system, check the file system, and merge partition.
However, if they make management on disk or partition which is with lots of fragmented files, they may receive different types of errors. For example, the partitioning program either Windows built-in or third party crashes suddenly.
Therefore, before doing partition-related operations especially making relatively complex operations , users had better defrag the hard disk or volume in advance. Now that defragmentation will bring us big benefits, how can we do this task?
Next, we are going to take how to defrag Windows 7 as an example to show users detailed steps. To do defragment hard drive, users need the help of disk defragmenter, and they can use either Windows built-in Disk Defragmenter or third party programs.
Here, we just recommend Windows snap-in program since this tool is powerful enough to do the operation. When we are making disk defragmentation, the hard disk will be running at a high speed. If we read or write data at this time, our computer may crash or the entire hard disk may be physically damaged.
Defragmentation is much different from other computer operations since the former will make the hard disk spin at a high speed. If users defrag computer frequently operate hard disk frequently , the service time could be reduced rather than increased. Therefore, it is highly suggested that users do disk defragmentation when necessary. Note that they can analyze disk to see whether defrag is needed or not.
If users make defragmentation for partitions which stores system backup, the backup might be useless.
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