To reduce the impact of this fragmentation there is a process called “defragment”. Defragmenting a hard drive mainly consists of taking all the fragments of the divided files and placing them in the most consecutive way possible. This way, when we try to access them, the hard disk head doesn’t have to move to several different positions, but can read the entire file consecutively.
Something that we must keep in mind in this case is that the process of defragmenting an HDD drive can take a while. Depending on the free space available, and therefore the occupation, in addition to the total size of the hard drive, this is a process that will take us a while. This means that on many occasions when we are about to defragment a hard drive, we will have to be patient. Precisely for this reason, it is advisable to carry out these maintenance tasks when we are not going to need to use the computer for a while, even several hours.
Defragmenting a hard drive is one of the most basic maintenance tasks. In addition, it is one of those that performs windows automatically without us having to worry about it. Of course, what we should never defragment is an SSD, since we can literally break it.
Why SSDs should not be defragmented
Unlike hard drives (whose head is physically moved to various positions to access files), SSD have random access. That is, instead of having to go from position 1 to 10 by going through all positions, SSDs directly access position 10. Therefore, even if a file is divided into several smaller parts, this does not affect the performance of the computer, since the access times are the same as if it were all followed.
However, although SSDs are not affected by fragmentation and do not need to be defragmented, there are some basic maintenance tasks for these drives, such as placing highly divided files consecutively into the least used parts and sorting the most used files by be able to access them more easily.
How to defragment hard drives in Windows 10 and 11
Windows has had software to defragment files since the days of Windows 95, although it is true that this tool has changed a lot since then. Windows 10, of course, has its own software for defragmenting hard drives. And besides, this one is capable of differentiate between normal hard drives and SSDs. Thus, the program will keep our hard drives defragmented and SSDs optimized without endangering them.
Where is the Windows disk defragmenter
We can get to the Windows 10 disk defragmenter in several ways. For example, we can use the Windows 10 search engine to open this tool by typing in it “defragment”. To say that this is one of the most comfortable and used methods of accessing this tool, since it allows us to access said defragmenter directly.
And we can also open the properties window of any of the hard drives (or SSD) of our computer. in the tab “tools” we will find this defragmenter.
When we open the tool we will see a window like the following.
As we can see, Windows itself differentiates between solid-state drives and hard drives. Hard drives will stay defragmented automatically, while Solid State Drives, or SSDs, will stay optimized.
The button “Analyze” that appears in the defragmenter helps us check the fragmentation status of any hard drive (not SSD) that we have connected to the PC. On the other hand, the button “Optimize” It allows us to carry out the corresponding task to improve the performance of the unit, depending on its type. In this way we can quickly launch this system optimization tool in order to improve the performance of the disk drives.
How to schedule automatic defragmentation
In the defragmenter window we have a button called «change settings«. From it we will be able to access the few options that this tool has to keep the units optimized and ready to work.
Basically we must look at the «scheduled runso that Windows can optimize drives automatically. We will also have the possibility to choose which days of the week we want to optimize the units automatically. And if for some reason a drive fails to optimize 3 times, the tool will give it priority to try to defragment or optimize the next time automatically.
As you can imagine this will allow us to ignore this maintenance process in the future and at the same time keep the defragment drives at all times. Of course, we recommend carrying out this process automatically in medium or long periods of time. Nor is it necessary to perform this task, which will sometimes take a long time, every day or every week. Although this convenient space of time is something that we will talk about in more depth below.
In addition, we will also be able to choose the units that we want (or not) to optimize automatically, as well as an option that allows us to choose if we want the new units to optimize automatically.
With this we have already seen everything that the Windows 10 file defragmenter provides. Although it is true that there are other programs to defrag hard drives that are a little more complete, the truth is that with the Windows tool, although it is simple, we will have more than enough.
How often do we have to defrag?
Some users often wonder How often we have to carry out this configuration. The truth is that there is no specific number of days to do it, since it will depend on the use we make of the computer. There are users who do it every week, others every month, and others never.
modern versions of windows They are already in charge of keeping hard drives defragmented. When they detect that the percentage of fragmentation increases, while we do not use the PC they organize our files. And, when finished, we will have our hard drive ready to work 100%. If we don’t trust it, we can do it ourselves from time to time, when we notice that the PC starts to slow down. This can be part of the optional maintenance of the PC, but do not obsess over it.
And, of course, if we have a ssd we can completely forget about this work.
Tips to avoid fragmentation of hard drives
Hard drive fragmentation is inevitable. In the end, with the mere fact of using the PC, the files will be moving all the time, and in the end that means that there are holes that end up being filled with pieces of other programs. That is, they fragment.
However, with some simple advice it is possible to reduce the level of file fragmentation so that we will not have problems. For example:
- Move Temporary Internet Files to another disk. These files are the main causes of fragmentation due to their nature and, therefore, if we move them to another drive we will not have problems.
- Update Windows and programs. Updates not only serve to be able to use the PC safely, but also help us to prevent programs that have been on the PC for a long time from remaining fragmented. Additionally, updates fix issues that may help reduce this issue.
- Uninstall unnecessary software. By not having programs that we don’t need on the PC, we will avoid leaving small holes that have to be filled with other files.
Of course, by performing defragmentation of the disks and SSD units periodically we will be able to keep the level of fragmentation as low as possible.
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