Often, as time goes by, computers start to run slowly, poorly, and give problems and errors. This is usually because the system has been poorly maintained, and in the end everything ends up taking its toll and weighing down the system in general. We often think about formatting the PC and reinstalling Windows from scratch when this happens. But, almost always, there is a much faster and simpler solution.
Hard drives, and to a lesser extent SSDs, “fragment” the data stored on them over time. Fragmentation is something that has been affecting us since the first versions of the operating system, more than 30 years ago. This occurs when a large file needs to be stored on the drive, but there are no consecutive free sectors to store all the information in a row. The file is then divided into several parts that are filled with zeros and ones until the entire file is stored on the disk.
When we are going to read this file, in normal hard drives, the head has to search for information across the entire surface of the disk, and make several jumps to access the data. This is what mainly makes the computer seem slow. This also happens in SSDs, but since data access is random, and does not depend on a head or mechanical elements, it is insignificant.
To solve this problem, Windows has a tool that allows us to defragment hard drives and place all the “parts” of the files consecutively to improve data access times. All the related fragmented data pieces are put back together and aligned in a successive, clean and orderly manner. That is why defragmentation not only improves the health of the disk, but generally improves the performance of the PC.
Today I will explain to you how you should use it often.
Defragment and optimize drives
The easiest way to check the status of your hard drive is by using the Defragment and Optimize Drives application that you can find installed by default in Windows 10 and Windows 11.
So, if we notice that our HDD is slowing down, we need to check how fragmented it is. To do this, we use the Start menu search box to type “defragment” and select the Defragment and Optimize Drives tool.
Within this tool we can find several very useful options. The basic thing is to select the drive we want to defragment and click on the “Analyze” button so that Windows can know its status. Once it has been analyzed, we can choose the “Defragment” option to put all the fragments of the drive consecutively.
In addition, Windows will allow us to schedule an automatic defragmentation so that we can forget about this task.
What about SSDs?
While SSD drives operate differently and do not require defragmentation, Windows has a number of optimizations that can help optimize the performance of these drives and extend their lifespan.
Windows will automatically detect the type of drive you have mounted on your PC. Once it is open, select the drive and click on Optimize an SSD, as long as you have administrator permissions. Once this is done, it will run a fragmented file analysis and optimize the drive for better performance.
