Often when you have been using your home computer for a while you may look into ways to really improve and increase the performance of your PC. One of the most popular options is the defragging your Hard Disks. So, let’s take a more in depth look at the defragmentation process and whether or not it works.

When you use your home computer for work, such as making or saving new files, the files are being continuously created as well as erased from the hard disk. When the disk is empty, Windows will try to store the new files near or next to the location of the previous file. This is done in order to increase the speed of processing the files(s) when they are needed.

Now as the time goes on, often, some of the files are deleted or moved. As these files are deleted or moved, it leaves some voids behind on the hard disk.  Now, when a new file has to be stored, this file has a good chance to be stored in these voids that were created when other files were deleted. Also, when a file is too large to fit into one void, your computer splits up the file and then stores one part in one void and the other part in the next void. Now, during processing of these files, your PC will have to make locate the different parts of this previously split up file. During this process, the computer takes more time than usual as it has to look in many places for different parts of the file. This is how defragmentation can slow your computer down.

Defrag it now:

Don’t worry, there is an easy solution to this problem. There are various utilities available that can defrag your hard disks. Defragging is the process in which all the voids are filled and your hard disk is rearranged so that all the files are stored in a single place on your hard disk.  Windows comes with a built-in defrag tool. To defrag, simply open up “my computer” and right click on the drive you wish to defragment. Then, click properties, click tools, and click defragment now. Just follow the instructions from here in Windows.

I would also recommend checking out a program called defraggler. This is an awesome and free utility that does a great job defragging your hard drive.

Defragmenting SSD Drives

If you are using an SSD hard drive, you will NOT want to defragment this drive. If you defrag, it can cause unnecessary wear and tear on the drive. Also, the architecture of an SSD drive is different than the older, standard hard drives. The SSD drive does not really benefit from defragmentation the same way the older SATA/IDE drives do.

About the Author: Umpreet loves to write about technology related articles, tips, and optimization tricks.