Short Bytes: These days, fragmentation doesn’t cause the computers to slow down much as it used to. Now, modern operating systems take care of the disk defragmentation process on their own and run it on a scheduled basis. If you are using an SSD, disk fragmentation is of no use. However, on older systems with Windows XP and HDD, one needs to run disk defragmentation process manually.

You might have heard tech people talking about the need of defragging the PC to make it faster. It’s often recommended as a way to increase the PC performance. But, do You know the meaning of disk defragmentation? Do you know how often you need to defrag your storage drive?

Well, as the name suggests, disk defragmentation sounds something like putting back the broken pieces together. In terms of PC management, it deals with picking up all the pieces of data spread across your hard drive and bringing them together.

How does disk fragmentation occur?

Most PC hard drives have spinning patterns and they store data in different places. While writing some new data, blocks are created that are sequentially ordered. When a file gets split between different far away blocks, fragmentation occurs. As a result, read heads take much longer to read that file.

When disk defragmentation takes place, the blocks are brought back in sequential order, making the job of read heads easier. Thus, it compacts the data and removes the gap between different parts of the file, resulting in the speeding up your PC.

Should I defrag my personal computer manually?

Gone are the days when disk defragmentation was a regular chore to keep the PC healthy. The modern operating systems like Windows 8.1, Windows 10, macOS, etc. perform this process regularly on their own. So, you don’t need to worry about that.

Disk defragmentation on Windows Windows 7, Vista, 8.1, 10

Disk defragmenter runs automatically on Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, macOS. If you’re interested in knowing more, you can search for “defrag” on your Windows 7, Vista, 8.1 and 10 systems and make sure that it’s running on schedule. On macOS, this process runs automatically and you don’t need to do anything.

Disk defragmentation on Windows XP

Just in case you’re stuck with a Windows XP PC, you need to defragment your system manually. Just open the Start menu, open Run, type Dfrg.msc and hit Enter. This will open the Disk Defragmenter application that’ll show you the option to defragment each drive. You can set it to run on a schedule or run it manually.

Don’t use disk defragmentation while using an SSD

If your computer system is SSD-based, you don’t need to defragment it. They don’t use a spinning pattern so it doesn’t take any extra time to read from different parts of the drive. Modern operating systems run SSD optimization on their own.

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