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What is 'defragging', and why should I do it?

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Summary: Defragging is short for defragmenting which rearranges the layout of files on your hard disk for faster access.

What is 'defragging', and why should I do it?

"Defragging" is short for "defragmenting", and it's a process you run on a hard drive to help make it faster. It's something you need to do periodically as files on the disk becomes fragmented over time - hence the term "defragmenting".

So what does it mean to be fragmented, and why does it get worse over time?

Let's look at that, as well as how to defragment and how to defragment automatically.

To you and me, a file on your disk is a single 'thing'. You open it, you work on it, you save it; it's a single entity. Like, say, a book. To your computer, however, a file is a lot more like a bunch of pages in that book that it has to keep track of individually.

Let's briefly define a couple of concepts before we go further. Under Windows a hard disk is nothing more than a collection of information buckets called "clusters". Each cluster is a fixed size, typically 512 bytes or characters. When you create a file on disk, Windows assigns enough clusters to the file to hold it. So if your file is one byte long, it gets one 512 byte cluster. If your file is 600 bytes, it gets two - one 512 bytes full, and one with 88 bytes of data, and 424 bytes unused.

Clusters aren't required to be next to each other on the disk. In fact, that's part of what the "Random" in "Random Access Storage" means; data can be accessed and stored on the disk in random places. So when Windows creates a file, it keeps track of which clusters make up the file, wherever on the disk they might be, and in which order they should go. Kind of like numbering the pages in a book.

Now, imagine if you had the pages of a book randomly distributed around your house. You know where they are and in what order to read them, but you have to run all over the house as you get each successive page.

That's a fragmented file. The clusters that make up the file are scattered throughout the disk. The result is that when you access the file, Windows has to race all over the hard disk to retrieve the whole thing. That takes time.

If instead the pages of your book were all next to each other, in order, then they'd be much easier to read. No need to run all over. That's a defragmented file: all the clusters allocated to the file are in order and physically next to each other on the hard disk.

Files become fragmented because of the way clusters are re-used and allocated on a hard disk. If you delete a file that takes up two clusters, and then write a file that takes four then the new file might be split - two clusters where the old file was, and two clusters somewhere else entirely. Multiply that scenario by thousands of file operations and deletions on your disk every day, with much larger files, and you can see that fragmentation can add up very quickly. The result is your machine gradually slowing down.

Defragging your hard disk is easy. Right click on My Computer, select Manage, and click on Disk Defragmenter. Click on the hard disk you want to defrag, and click on the Defragment button. Defragging can take time, but you'll be able to see the progress as the graphical display of your hard disks state is periodically updated.

Rather than doing it manually, though, if you leave your computer on there's an easy way to schedule the defrag to happen in the middle of the night.

Fire up notepad, and enter the following:

defrag c: >c:\defrag.log 2>&1

Now save that as "c:\defragit.cmd".

Now, in Control Panel, Performance and maintenance, Scheduled tasks, create a new scheduled item. It should run c:\defragit.cmd, and I'd suggest doing it every night when you're not using your machine. Check the log every once in a while to make sure that the process is happening as you expect.

You can run defragit.cmd at any time yourself, if you like. Just open up a command prompt and type c:\defragit.cmd.

Video

Here's a video I put together that walks through some of the steps above:

Related Links:

Article C2123 - July 16, 2004

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Recent Comments
52 Comments

what an analagy about book being a harddrive

Posted by: Anonomys at May 21, 2008 7:39 AM

Thanks alot Leo. I seen my optimizer say that it was reccomended for a defragmentation and i wanted to know what i was doing first. Thankyou!

Posted by: Brad at July 13, 2008 6:24 PM

hi.. do we need to power on our pc if we schedule to defrag at night or early in the morning even if we're away from our pc's? thanks..

Nothing will happen unless the PC is turned on.

-Leo

Posted by: anonymous at July 23, 2008 4:24 AM

Excellent article, extremely helpful.
But I'm having a problem, I can't save the Notepad file because it's saying I need permission from the Administrator or something. But my user account *is* the Administrator account on my machine? I'm running Vista if that helps... Thanks!

Posted by: Sas at September 3, 2008 12:29 AM

hi LEO sir, really very beautifully written that even a layman like me can also understand.humbly saying sir i am very impressed.easy to understand means you have done a lot hardwork thanks a million sir.

Posted by: Rajinder at September 18, 2008 2:44 AM

Defragmentation is complete for: HP_PAVILION (C:)

Some files on this volume could not be defragmented.
Please check the defragmentation report for the list of these files can you tell me why this comes up and the defragmentation does not finish? Thank you

Defragging can fail on certain files if they're too large (not enough free space on the drive), if they are system files, or in some cases if they are in use and locked. You'll have to look at the log that the messages it telling you about to see what files are not defragged.

And for the record: it's ok if some don't. I wouldn't worry about it.

- Leo
22-Sep-2008
Posted by: Raymond Anderson at September 21, 2008 5:25 PM

I have Windows ME. (There is no "manage" box when right clicking on "My Computer".) How do I perform this operation?

Posted by: iamawriter at December 29, 2008 12:29 PM

when using defrag it brings your computer back up to the speed it was when new not faster

Posted by: Terry at April 2, 2009 7:57 AM

Couple of points of clarification.
Defrag CAN free up some space in 2 ways. But you shouldn't count it happening, or expect much space to be freed up.
First, depending on how the fragmentation happened, each fragment could have "freespace" intended by the file system for growth. So when the file is defragged the only freespace left is at the end of the file.

The other way defrag can free up space is if there are many small unsed spots on the drive, the file system may not use them until they are "joined" together into a larger block of freespace.

On the question of locked files, the more "advanced" (than the stripped down defrag tool bundled with Win) defrag tools that can handle locked files. They perform defrag in several discrete steps. One of the later steps is to do a reboot and run a defrag BEFORE the OS and/or "startup" apps are loaded.

As well, when HD free space is less than 20% Windows can get twitchy. Strange, unexpected, things can happen such as defrag programs abending unexpectedly. It's not as common a problem these days as it was when HD size was measured in MB not GB.

I'm afraid you're incorrect. Defrag does not free up space. The examples you quote are not how things work. Moving free space around does not create more free space.
- Leo
17-Jun-2009
Posted by: Rohn at June 16, 2009 8:33 PM

I defragmented my drive and it improved the speed a lot. I used the trial version of Diskeeper09 which a friend suggested. Its really easy to use as its automatic.

Posted by: ruman at June 19, 2009 2:35 AM

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