Defrag My PC

You may have heard the advice to “defrag” your hard drive but what does that mean? And why should you do it? A hard disk is a storage device that is made up of smaller sections called sectors. Each sector can store a certain amount of data, typically about 512 bytes. If you’re thinking that many of your files exceed this size limitation, you’re right. Windows spreads your files across multiple sectors.

Your files can outgrow their original location too. When this happens, Windows breaks them up further and places the fragments in other sectors located throughout the drive. All these non-continuous files make for a fragmented drive. Windows can still piece together the files and function but the system’s performance suffers the more fragmented the drive becomes.

Fortunately, Microsoft supplies you with a built-in utility designed to realign your files and “defragment” the drive. The Disk Defragmenter is accessible from My Computer (Windows XP) or Computer (Windows Vista). Simply right-click the drive you’d like to defragment and choose properties. Click the Tools tab and find the Defragmentation area.

Click Defrag Now.

This process takes quite a bit of time to complete. Plan on defragging your hard drive when you do not need to use the computer such as at night before you go to bed or when leaving the office at the end of the day. Make sure to disable any screensavers or other automatic processes because these programs will interrupt the defrag process causing it to start over from the beginning and perhaps even creating an endless cycle of restarts and interruptions.

The Windows Vista Defragmenter tool also lets you create an automatic schedule for regular hard drive defragmenting. 

To create a schedule click on the Modify schedule button and enter the dates and times.

To perform an immediate defragmentation, click on Defragment now.

If you are an advanced computer user, you can use the command line tool Defrag.exe to perform advanced defrag tasks and generate detailed reports. The following switches can be used:

<volume>        Specifies the drive letter/mount point path to be defragmented

-c                     Defragments all of the computer’s volumes

-a                     Fragmentation analysis only

-r                      Partial defragmentation. Consolidates fragments that are less than 64MB

-w                    Full defragmentation. Consolidates all file fragments, regardless of their size

-f                     Forces defragmentation when free space is running low

-v                     Verbose mode. More detailed defragmentation and analysis output

-?                     Displays help information

Once your disk has been defragmented, you should notice an improvement in your computer’s performance. Programs will load faster, documents will open quicker, and your operating system won’t have to work as hard performing basic functions.

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