Defrag my Computer

Hard disks, even with the fastest in commerce (above 7200 RPMs) often constitute the main 'bottleneck' to the speed of a computer. The time to access a particular cluster on a hard drive can be, up to thousand times slower than access the same amount of memory on a RAM dimm. When the hard disk is empty, the file system is free to write the files on the hard disk to an optimal location, but after a few deletes and rewrites, what will happen is that data related to the same application will be saved onto non continuous clusters. This means the hard drive head has to move around more, to get to the data, making data retrieval and update much slower.

When you run a defraging program, it rearranges all the files in a contiguous and optimal way, so to minimize the access time by the hard disk, thus reducing the 'bottleneck'.

Defraging a drive takes about 30 minutes, during which time you will not be able to use your PC.

It is worth noting that if your hard drive is near to full capacity it will be more prone to fragmentation.

Why should I defrag my computer ?
  1. A fragmented drive is slower to read than a non-fragmented drive. The speed difference can be significant.
  2. Your hard drive will be less prone to breaking if you defragment it regularly.

How frequently should I defrag my computer ?

You should check it every 3 months. The defrag program will show you how fragmented your drive is. If the fragmentation is less than 1 % you do not need to defrag your drive.

Defrag in Windows XP

Click Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter

Click on the drive that you would like to defragment.
Click on the analyze button to see if you need to defrag your hard drive.
Click on defragment to defrag the selected drive.

Vista

Vista has a built in defragmenter that runs automatically.
You can open it by clicking: Start > Programs > Select the Control Panel Home >System and Maintenance > Under the Administrative Tools section at the bottom, click Defragment


Got a Linux PC?

I recommend that you download e2defrag and use that to clean up your drive.

Got a Mac?

Apple computers don't come with a free defrag program like Windows PCs, you will need to buy a program like iDefrag, to defrag a Mac. It is worth noting that the Mac OSx operating system is very resistant to fragmentation. So you might not need to defrag it.