What dose defragmenting your computer actually do? is it of any benefit and should we do it regularly.?

Question

I often defrag my computer when it's getting a little slow, can anyone tell me if it's of any benefit of is it actually packing files up and making them slower to open? any input would be appreciated cheers Marty

Answer 1

home computers dont need as much defragging as say a business that inputs tons of information daily.  you can analize to see if you need to defrag.  it will tell you if it is necessary or not.  it is basically filing new data into files in such a way to access the information/files quicker.

as if you have a pile of paperwork that needs to go in particular files.

it is quicker to go to the file than to go thru the pile of paperwork.  

Answer 2

yes defraggment is necessary, try this free one, I like Pirius products but havent looked at this one yet, but their other two products are spot on.

http://www.defraggler.com/

i suggest to set it to defrag every 2 hours.  That way it will only take seconds to do.

Start off by defraging when you go to bed for the first 3 nights  then set it for every 2 hours when the computer is on.

My personal one is set to come on when the screen saver comes on, it stops when the scrensaver stops, but for my wifes computer this was not adequate because the computer was always being used.  You decide.

Answer 3

computer saves files wherever it finds empty unused space which means that space can be far apart just to store one file. Eventually as you use your computer and save a lot of files files starts being all over the place. It will eventually slow down the computer since the hard drive head will have to move all over the drive platter surface just to find these files that are scattered all over the place. When you defrag it the computer starts rearranging the data clusters so that the files are close to each other as possible so that it won't have to search all over the drive to get the data it needs but will only have to move a very short distance which dramatically speeds up the read and writes of the drive thereby increasing overall computer performacing espeically when loading programs. I would suggest doing this at least once a month.

Answer 4

Fragment happens when you save and delete files for a long time.

When save a new file inside your hard drive, let say a 10MB file. The OS tries to put it in closest empty space, and the closest space is only 2MB (2MB file was there and has been deleted ) so the OS puts 2MB in the space and tries to find a place for the rest of the file 8MB and so on. When the OS tries to retrieve the file it will take time collecting the file form these areas.

Defragmentation process is to rearrange the piece of the files to occupy contiguous storage locations.

Thus when you want to defragment the utility tells you that you need about 15% of your HD empty, so it can rearrange the files on that empty area.

Answer 5

during normal use of your computer files get scattered all over your hard drive. defragging puts them back in order and makes them easier to access. you should defrag about every fortnight or so along with other maintenance tasks

Answer 6

It takes files that have been chopped up spread throughout your hard drive and puts them together, there is no packing of files and it actually quickens access time. I wouldn't suggest doing it anymore than once a month because it's very intensive on your hard drive.

Answer 7

Files on a computer are kept in so called clusters. These clusters are of different dimensions, depending on the operating system you use. Normally clusters that form a file are not put one after the other on the disk, meaning that they are not contiguous.

When a file is read then the hard disk mechanisms have to travel to each cluster hat form the file. If the clusters are one after the other, the file can be read in one "sweep", if not, then the disc has to turn several times until the file is read, making it more cost consuming (time, power). Deterioration of the hard disk is also an issue when using an fragmented hard drive over a long period of time.

This is where defragmentation software comes in. It puts all clusters of a specific file one after the other so that the hard disk may read it faster than before, becoming contiguous.. No packing of data occurs.

Defragmenting once a month or two is considered good practice. I recommend you do that while you sleep, as it tends to take a long time, depending on how much data you have stored on your disk and how fragmented it is.

Answer 8

it move the files around on your pc so it can access then faster

i do this once a month