What is disk defragmentation and why is it needed. Disk Defragmenter

In this material, you will get acquainted with such an important maintenance operation as defragmentation. Many novice users (and not only) often neglect this feature, which eventually leads to an increase in read / write time, and, accordingly, a decrease in computer performance. But before answering the question, what is disk defragmentation and how to do it, let's look at the principle of writing files to disk.

How are files written to the hard drive?

Simply put, it is not completely written to the disk, but is “decomposed” into cluster cells, which are the minimum space for storing information on the hard disk. Those. the file is split into pieces corresponding to the size of the cluster.

Disk structure: (A) track (B) geometric sector (C) track sector (D) cluster

Initially, as long as there is enough free space on the disk, the file is written into clusters sequentially - one after the other. As the media fills up, there may be a shortage of consecutive clusters, (especially in the case of writing large files), in which case the system starts looking for free cells and distributes parts of the file over them, which takes more time. It is the same when reading a file written in disparate clusters - it takes time to find all the parts of the file on disk and assemble it. It turns out that fragments of the file are scattered here and there - it is fragmented, and there can be many such files. When a fragmented file is deleted, empty scattered clusters remain in its place, into which other files will again be scattered when they are written. All this significantly reduces the performance of the computer and the resource of the hard drive.

What is disk defragmentation?

Disk defragmentation is designed to collect scattered parts of files into continuous sequential clusters as much as possible. We can say that the system will try to collect the fragmented file into a single whole. Empty scattered clusters during this process will also be connected into serial chains. In addition, during defragmentation, most of the data will be moved closer to the beginning of the disk. The defragmentation operation speeds up the launch of programs and the loading of data. Before starting the process, it is recommended to remove unused programs and data.

How often to defragment?

The frequency of defragmentation depends on the size of your hard drive, how much it is used, how full it is, how often you install and uninstall programs.

How to defragment a disk?

Consider the defragmentation process using the example of Windows 7, as the most common operating system at the time of publication of the article. The Windows system has a regular program with which you can analyze the selected local disk for the need to defragment it and directly start the process itself. The fastest way to run it is:

Open folder " A computer". Start—>Computer.

Select local drive. By clicking on it with the right mouse button, call the context menu, in which select the item " Properties". At the top of the properties window, select the " Service” and click on the button “ Run a defrag»

In the defragmenter window that opens, click on the " Analyze disk”, after which the process of checking the disk for the degree of fragmentation will begin. After the end of the analysis, the program will show how fragmented the disk is. If the degree of fragmentation is higher than 15%, you must click the " Disk Defragmenter” and wait until the end of the program.

The defragmentation program can also be started from the Main Menu. To do this, click on the button " Start", select from the menu" All programs«, « Standard«, « Service» and left-click on the icon « Disk Defragmenter»

Do not forget to carry out this procedure regularly, and your hard drive will appreciate the speed of its work. In conclusion, it should be noted that for high-speed SSD drives, defragmentation is not needed, because. in them the principle of storing information is different. SSD drives will be discussed in the following materials.

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How a hard drive works

Good afternoon friends! Today we will talk on the topic "Why do you need to defragment your hard drive?". Disk defragmentation is the optimal connection into a single node of a disparate hard disk structure. For convenience, users divide the hard disk into several parts, disks. Each disc has its own tracks. Tracks are divided into sectors. The size of one sector is 512 bytes. The tracks themselves are grouped into clusters.

The first track contains the file tables, it is called zero. When requesting a file, the PC first looks for it in the table, then determines the track number. After that, it checks in which sector the file is located. The file is then copied. After that it will be processed. Just in case, a copy of the file table is made.

Why you need to defragment your hard drive

Each file takes a whole cluster for itself, regardless of how large the given file has. Quite often, clusters are randomly scattered across the disk. When you delete or add a new file, some of its elements are written in clusters far from each other. As a result, something similar to a barcode is formed, empty clusters interspersed with busy ones.

What do we get as a result? The file may be scattered all over the disk. The PC will have to spend a lot of time in order to read it.

Before performing disk defragmentation, the system necessarily analyzes it. How much fragments of files are scattered. Then the operating system reads these files and places them in the buffer. After that, the files are overwritten in adjacent clusters. The magnetic head of the hard disk after the manipulations spends much less time and as a result, the work of the entire OS increases significantly.

In addition, disk analysis is necessary to detect errors in it. The analysis allows you to determine how fragmented the disk is. Errors in the disk can be physical and logical.

Physical errors are essentially damage in the hardware itself, in some part of the hard drive, wear, or other damage. The hard drive is very delicate. Its fall even from a small height of 10 cm can lead to irreversible consequences. In addition, the hard drive becomes corrupted when the computer is turned on. Therefore, you should not turn the computer on and off frequently.

Logical errors occur when a disk does not work properly. For example, such errors occur when the power is turned off unexpectedly. The system detects such errors and, if possible, corrects them.

How to defragment a hard drive

In order to perform disk defragmentation, there is not much work to do. The system has a built-in defragmentation program. It is enough to type "Disk Defragmenter" in the search bar and you will open this program. You can also find it through the start.

Open start, select "all programs", then look for "Standard", then "Utilities", and in fact, "Disk Defragmenter".

Next, click on the disk defragmentation line and it will begin. We will consider this in more detail in another article "". In this article, I talk in detail about this software for defragmentation and how to carry it out.

In addition to it, disk defragmentation can be carried out by a number of programs and utilities that can carry it out. One of them is Glary Utilities. In addition to it, there are a number of programs that can defragment.

You can defragment the disk yourself once a month. I hope you now know exactly what disk defragmentation is and why is it needed? I wish you smooth operation of your computer.

Many people who use a computer are constantly faced with this problem. In the first months after installing an operating system or purchasing a new computer, it took only a minute for the computer to be fully operational after being turned on. Booting the system takes a few minutes.

However, over time (in particular, equipment that has already served for several years suffers from this), turning on the computer takes more and more time. And in the process of work, the system continues to “slow down”.
One of the main reasons that leads to problems is the fragmentation of data on the hard drive (hard drive). We read about how to choose a hard drive in. Of course, there are other reasons for the slow operation of the operating system, but fragmentation is the main thing. So,

What is disk defragmentation?

To make it easier to understand the essence of the phenomenon, we give the following example. Imagine that you went to the forest to pick mushrooms. And suddenly you see that all the mushrooms grow in one line and you don’t have to look for them throughout the forest - just go in a straight line and collect them. It is clear that in half an hour your basket will be full of these wonderful gifts of the forest. However, in reality, mushrooms grow throughout the forest, so your hike will last much longer.

The mushroom example is great for simulating the situation with data on a hard drive. While it is empty, the system writes files in one "chunk", one file fragment after another, so reading data is fast, because. the magnetic head on the drive does not need to spend time transitioning from one fragment to another.

Over time, when deleting old data and adding new ones, the system writes files fragmentarily, that is, breaking them into separate fragments, puts them in those cells that are currently free. Of course, the search for information with this approach takes longer - it's like looking for mushrooms scattered throughout the forest.

A few pictures to explain what fragmentation is.

Clean hard drive (no files).

Then it was completely filled with various files (files are shown in different colors).

And now we write to the empty space a new file, which is so large that it does not fit into separate empty spaces. As you can see our red file fragmented(i.e. broken into fragments).

When reading with a magnetic head, it will be forced to “jump” from one fragment to another, which takes time and such a file will take longer to read.

It should be noted that in this case we are talking only about magnetic storage devices (HDD designation), since the reading head often has to change its position. Another variety - solid state drives (SSD designation) - have a completely different reading principle and this problem does not concern them. But now a large number of computers use HDDs, primarily because of the high cost of solid state drives. To find out what type of hard drive your computer has, check with your PC dealer or builder.

So, in order to speed up the reading of data (and hence the operation of the computer), you need to collect separate fragments of files into one whole and then consider the question of how to defragment the disk. For this purpose, there are a huge number of free programs that anyone can download on the Internet, but we will act using standard Windows OS tools. Consider step by step each action. We work in windows 7. The program for defragmenting the hard drive is built into the operating system.

Disk Defragmenter

Click on "My Computer". Right-click on the hard drive that needs to be defragmented (for example, local drive C).

If you have several hard drives, you can do the same operation for each of them separately. Next, go to the "Properties" menu.

For defragmentation, you need at least 15% of free space on the total volume of the hard drive. Be sure to check this before starting the procedure. If there is not enough free space, you can transfer some of the information to an external drive or, if you have several hard drives, transfer information to it. However, almost always, if you dig deep into the folders, you can find a bunch of unnecessary files and just delete them.

Next, click on the "Tools" tab and left-click on the "Defragment" button.
The system will prompt you to analyze the hard drive for fragmented files. After viewing the statistics, if there is a need for defragmentation, simply start the process using the appropriate button.

The defragmentation process can take quite a long time - from one to several hours, depending on the number of files and their fragmentation. It should be noted that defragmentation can take several hours, depending on the amount of data and the degree of fragmentation. For example, you can start this process before going to bed, and in the morning your computer will “fly” and there will be no trace of annoying freezes!

By the way, you can defragment and .

Hello! Disk Defragmenter- many have heard about it, many know what it is, but almost no one does this necessary operation.

This situation reminds me of smokers - they know what is harmful, kills, but they do not quit smoking. The same goes for disk defragmentation. They forget to do it, do not attach importance ... Now we will consider what it is for, how, with what and when to do disk defragmentation. As always - in detail, step by step and in pictures. As they say - "on the fingers". I'm using the line...

Imagine that our hard drive (computer memory) is a ruler. A simple, wooden ruler from school childhood.

Let's "upload" a couple of programs and a game to this "line" ...

We use them for a while, but then we realize that we don’t need program “B” and delete it using CCleaner or Unlocker. We end up with this picture...

Without suspecting anything, we install another program, smaller. And here the most interesting begins. The computer is a smart machine. He tries his best to help the system, speed it up, optimize it. And prescribes a new program "C" as close as possible to the beginning of the "line". In the nearest free place.

As a result, we get a hole. In which FIG that will fit. This is fragmented data. Why and why does he do this? I'm telling...

The fact is that reading information from our "line" occurs with a special reader located on the carriage. So this carriage is worn with a reader like a fool with a mortar over the "ruler". And by the way with "cosmic" speed.

Imagine a mother of many children with ten crap children. Or a wolf with a basket from a very popular game of the 80-90s(on the last level)...

Represented? This is approximately how it happens in the iron innards of our computers. And this device (let's call it a wolf) needs to monitor and view all the programs and files on the "ruler", and then there are these useless holes. He also reads them all the time.

And the more we use the computer, install and delete files, the faster the number of these holes grows. As a result, the work of the system slows down, the "wolf" wears out, the mother of many children is in shock, the children in the city ... Oh, I can't take it anymore! Wait a second!

Everything, calmed down and got out from under the table. So what am I talking about here? Oh yes! What is disk defragmentation.

And in order to reduce the number of body movements of the “wolf”, speed up the search for files, the system places everything as close as possible to the beginning of the disk. Well, defragmenter programs are designed to put things in order in all this disgrace.

Disk defragmentation allows you to organize the location of files on the disk. Remove holes at the very end of the "ruler". Thus, stop following them and taking them into account.

I hope now you understand the importance and necessity of periodic disk defragmentation. "Wolf" smokes, mother sleeps, children are bought.

Now let's install the defragmenter. There are a lot of them on the net. Paid and free. I'll use a trusted, trusted maker of royalty-free software. Like CCleaner, Speccy, Recuva...

Defraggler- A freeware disk defragmenter. Simple, reliable and in Russian.

Download Defraggler

Installer size 6.1 Mb. Viruses are absent. The program works in all versions of the Windows operating system.

Installed a defragmenter. It will ask you to reboot - do it.

Optimizing your drive with Defraggler

After it, launch Defraggler and select the desired disk (it is advisable to select everything at once and click "defragment", then set the computer to turn off after the operation and go to sleep in the settings), click "Analysis" to find out if you need to defragment the disk today.

You can manage the process and put it in the background and go on with your business on the computer.

Disk defragmentation on Windows 7,8,10 is a mandatory and simple operation. Read and how it will help speed up your computer. The methods using built-in OS functions and third-party utilities are described below.

What is disk fragmentation and defragmentation?

Many Windows users have probably heard that defragmenting your hard drive will speed up your computer. Let's take a closer look at what fragmentation and defragmentation means and why you should start this process on your PC now.

Fragmentation is the breaking up of disk space into fragments. In simple words, when data is written to a new HDD, all information is divided sequentially (in clusters). After some time, the user copies, deletes, moves the data. This provokes the release of space by some clusters and their replacement by others.

The data recorded on the disk can be distributed in “pieces” in different sectors of the drive. This happens, as a rule, with various executable files, videos and other media files. After deleting an object or moving it, the disk sector is freed. Over time, different types of information accumulate in neighboring sectors:

As a result, various types of data are randomly scattered throughout the HDD. Reading files slows down, which affects the overall performance of the system. Also, a fragmented disk can cause deterioration in the performance of the hard drive.

You can fix the problem using the reverse process - defragmentation. The task of the operation is to match all parts of the same type of data and add them to common clusters. All hard disk data is distributed “on the shelves” and it becomes “easier” for the HDD reading head to find information.

What does disk defragmentation do?

• Programs and files open faster;
• Frees up space on the hard drive;
• Improves the overall performance of the OS.

When and how often to defrag?

Disk defragmentation on Windows is a process that takes quite a long time. It should not be performed frequently, as this may adversely affect the performance of the hard drive.

The frequency of the process also depends on how often and how you use your computer. For example, if you constantly install new programs, download information, use disk space, it is recommended to defragment the Windows disk once every 1-2 months. This will help maintain a good level of OS performance.

If you rarely run games, applications, do not store a large amount of data on the disk, you should start the process no more than once every 3-4 months.

Note that there is a concept of fast disk defragmentation on Windows. It works only "on the surface" of the HDD, that is, with those directories and partitions that you use most often. You can run such a defragmentation using third-party utilities. They will run the operation every time the computer is turned on. This does not harm the device and allows you to keep it running fast.

Defragmentation methods

There are two ways to start defragmenting hard disk partitions:

• Using Windows services;
• With the help of third party applications.

The first case is the safest, but long. Special programs allow you to defragment faster or run it every time you turn on the system. Before installing defragmentation utilities, we recommend scanning the executable file with an antivirus.

Instructions for Windows 7, 8, 10

Defragmentation process:

After the process completes, close the command prompt and restart your computer.

Using the Defragger utility (free)

Defragger is a handy disk defragmenter. Suitable for all versions of Windows.

Immediately after launch, the utility will scan hard drives. To start defragmentation, select a disk from the list and click on the "Defrag" button at the bottom of the main window. The main feature of the application is the ability to visualize the process of fixing disk space.

The program is distributed free of charge. Other features of Defragger:

• Simultaneous scanning of several disks;
• Analysis of folders, files and individual applications;
• Choice of batch or regular optimization;
• Disk defragmentation in Russian. You can change the application interface language in the Settings tab.

AusLogics Disc Defrag (Free)

Auslogics Disk Defrag is another popular free Windows disk defragmenter. With its help, you can simultaneously start defragmenting several disks connected to the computer.

Also, you can set the priority in scanning and optimizing disks or set automatic defragmentation. If you are using an older version of Windows 7, we recommend that you check the "Turn off PC after task completes" checkbox. As a rule, defragmentation of old versions of the OS can take several hours and it is better not to leave such a system turned on all night or while the user is away.

Diskeeper utility (paid)

Diskeeper is a paid defragmentation utility with more features and options for disk optimization.

Program features:

• Accelerated data processing;
• Defragmentation without loading the operating system. This is possible due to the use of special program code algorithms;
• Creating reports on the operation of the HDD and viewing the history of error reporting;
• Automatic removal of temporary files and other "garbage" to speed up the operating system;
• Ability to optimize the work of connected USB and CD drives;
• Troubleshooting defragmentation issues.

Why can't you defragment SSD drives?

If your computer does not work with an HDD, but with an SDD, you do not need to defragment. The file processing speed of a solid state drive does not depend on how data is written to it.

We advise you to disable defragmentation for such drives. This can be done in the "Optimize disks" window, the work with which is described in detail above. If the process is not disabled, the SSD will quickly fail, as such disks have a limit on the number of write cycles. Each defragmentation constantly overwrites partitions.

Solving Defragmentation Errors

If you are unable to start defragmentation, or if you receive error messages while executing a task, do the following:

• Open command prompt as system administrator;
• Enter the CHKDSK /С command (change the letter to the one you need);
• Press Enter to execute. The scan may take several minutes. As a result, a detailed report on the parameters of the drive and detected errors in its operation will appear on the screen. Processing and elimination of errors will start automatically.

Also, a defragmentation error may appear due to lack of free disk space. We recommend that you delete unnecessary files and applications, and then restart the process again. The HDD must have at least 1 GB of free space for normal operation.

Scan the file system with an antivirus or boot the OS in safe mode and try defragmenting again.

Another type of error does not manifest itself in stopping the process, but in the disappearance of files from the disk. This happens when several files are placed in the same cluster at once. The problem is typical for older versions of Windows 7. In this case, the system simply deletes all copies of the files and frees up memory. It is not possible to return the data.

Outcome

To constantly monitor the status of the hard disk, you should check the "Optimize disks" window. Keep in mind that the lower the percentage of fragmentation displayed in the window, the better the performance of your HDD. Also, before defragmenting the disk, scan it for errors using the "Analyze" button or using a third-party program.