We use computers to save, backup, edit or restore information that we need more often or wish to prevent for future use. We do a lot of addition and removal from our hard drive on a monthly basis and that creates fragmented sectors on the hard drive. Earlier when the hard drive storage used to be limited to 128 GB, it was important for us to run disk defragmenter more often however hard drives these days allows us a lot of space and the frequency of disk defrag can be reduced.

This article is all about your concerns related to disk defragmenter as should you perform disk defragmentation, how often, when, how and on which partition? You can perform this task manually or make use of one of the Best Disk Defragmenter Software for Windows to defrag your computer and get the optimum performance. Let’s get into every piece of information that you need to know!

What’s Disk Defrag?

Disk Defragmentation is a process to defragment the fragmented clusters back in shape. It is also known as ‘Defrag’ or ‘Defragging’ that rearrange the data saved on your hard drive so that related bits of data can be put together. It’s like cleaning the house and rearranging the stuff back to its place to have more organized space on the hard drive. As and when we read, edit, add or delete data, the fragmented space is created that slows down the PC. Disk defragmentation reorganizes the data on the hard drive and saves our precious space on the drive.

Effects of Fragmentation

There are several unmeasurable effects of fragmentation on the hard drive. You may suffer from computer performance problems as file fragmentation directly relates with the disk read and write speed that creates a noticeable impact on the computer performance.

Performance Related Issues

·         Long virus scan times due to cluttered files.

·         Takes longer than usual to take a backup of your hard drive.

·         Slow boot time as it takes longer than usual to read the boot record.

·         Degraded system performance issues resulting in a slow computer.

Reliability Issues

·         Increased chances of system crash and halts.

·         May experience no boof issues due to a fragmented hard drive.

·         Backup abortion, timed out responses due to large backup files.

·         Increased file corruption and data losses due to system crashes.

·         Data security is a highly compromised state.

Benefits of Disk Defragmentation

There are several benefits of performing regular disk defragmentation.

·         Improved system boot time

·         Swift application performance

·         Enhanced data transmission rate

·         Reduced latency and stability issues

·         Stable internet and browsing performance

·         Occasional file corruption and data loss

·         Extended hardware lifecycle

·         Improved backup time

·         Quick antivirus scans

·         And many more….

Is Defragmentation Good or Bad?

The role of Disk Defragmentation totally depends on the type of hard drive you use. You should Disk Defragment a hard drive only if the disk space is full or it has reached 70% of its capacity. On the other hand, gone are those days when the speed of disk rotation was a challenge. Hard drives earlier used to rotate 1200 Rounds Per Minute (RPM) to 2200 RPM but in today’s laptops, we get 5400 RPM to 7200 RPM capacity drives that are swift enough for faster data read-write capacity.

As per the study, disk defragmentation is fruitful on old hard drives as it enhances the speed and performance however if you more often perform disk defrag on new hard drives, you’ll end up shortening its life. In nutshell, don’t defrag new hard drives more often until it runs out of space and the frequency should be rare.

Is Defragging required on SDD?

Modern computers and Solid-State Drives (SSDs) are smart enough to keep a track of what the user read or write how often. It automatically arranges the data as per the frequency of its usage at the beginning, centre, or at the end of the spin read. Even if you perform disk defragment on SDD, you will not notice any difference.

On SDDs, it is NOT recommended to run a disk defrag as it is not required and will do no good. Running disk defragmentation is more beneficial on HDDs formatted with FAT 32 file systems. Mechanical drivers are different than SSDs in terms of performance.

How should You Run a Disk Defrag?

Windows operating system comes with built-in Disk Defragmentation feature that you can use if you can perform it on a regular interval. If you can’t take care of all sort of permutations and combinations, it is wise to use a defragmentation software to perform disk defrag on Windows 10.

Using one of the Best Disk Defragmentation Software for Windows can give you performance benefits on Mechanical hard drives but not on SSDs. Defragmentation software are smart enough to evaluate the status of the hard drive and automatically arranges the frequently used files at the beginning of the hard drive cluster.

Summing Up

Now that you know that Disk Defragmentation is good for Mechanical Hard Drives with an older file system and slower hard drives. It is not required to run disk defrag on hard drives with 5400 RPM and above spin rate. SSDs are advanced hard drives that don’t require performing disk defragmentation. Maintain a healthy hard drive for swift performance and gain optimum disk performance.