Before we go towards De-fragmentation of Hard disk on Windows 8, 7, Vista or XP, it is necessarily required to explain a little for our readers about the fragmentation concept because of what we need to defragment (defrag) hard disk on Windows computer using built-in Windows utility.
See also: Reduce Windows Boot Time
What is Fragmentation?
Normally, Hard disks are formatted with platters which stores data on both of its sides. And when a user saves a file on hard disk it probably stores in chunks on different locations on disk, what is called fragmentation. In its result whenever you access that file later on, your system have to do extra work to combine all blocks of your file from different spots of hard disk to provide you its full preview. So, here comes Defragmentation concept which arranges all of your files data on hard disk in a sequential format.
Is it Important to Defragment Hard Disk?
It is quite important to defrag hard disk because after defragging your hard disk speed will get positive impact. If you have a lot of data stored on your hard drive in that case you must defrag the drive to improve its working, as a lot of blocks have been created by different data files on different locations on hard disk, so combining that all will improve your computer performance.
Defragment Hard Disk
In Windows 8, Windows 7 or Windows Vista, “Disk Defragmenter” feature is enabled to do automatic scheduled defragmentation. To check that or to change your de-fragmentation preferences.
Disk Defragment in Windows 8
In Windows 8 right click on Start button location and select Control Panel option. In Control Panel window click on “System and Security” section and then click on “defragment and optimize your drive” option under “Administrative Tools”.
Disk Defragment in Windows 7 or Vista
Windows 7 and Vista users click on Start button, type “Disk Defragmenter” in “Search” and click on Disk Derangementer from the search results. In result Disk Defragmenter window will get open with different options where you can change schedule defragmentation according to your choice, or perform Disk Defragmentation manually.
Disk Defragment in Windows XP
If you work on a computer equipped with Windows XP then you have to do Disk Defragmentation manually because the feature is not enabled by default. To access “Disk Defragmenter” tool in Windows XP navigate through “Start” button and then click on “All Programs” > “Accessories” > “System Tools”, and click “Disk Defragmenter”. On Disk Defragmenter window you can perform disk defrag for any volume of your hard disk.
Schedule Disk Defragment in Windows XP
As it is mentioned earlier that in Windows XP Disk defrag process is performed manually, but if you want to set it on schedule then there is a way out there to do that. You can create a Scheduled task to schedule disk defragmentation in Windows XP, so just go through “Control Panel” > “Scheduled Task”.
In Scheduled Task wizard window click on “Browse…” button, copy and paste the following command in place of “File name:” field and click on Open button there.
%systemroot%\system32\defrag.exe
Type a name for the task for example Disk Defragment and select an option from the available ones to perform the task on a scheduled time period.
Scheduled Task wizard in XP will also ask for some information so provide that to complete the schedule Disk Defragmentation process and thats it.
Windows Disk Defragmenter tool also gives an option of “Analyze Disk”, which performs an analysis for your selected Volume of hard disk to let you know in result that either you should go for Defragmentation or not, which is obviously a time taking task.
Note: Solid State Drives (SSDs) does not need Defragmentation because no fragmentation concept is there in.