how and what does defragmenting your computer work?

Question

i mean people say that it increases your comp speed

Answer 1

And it does!!!
Here's how it works: when you save information on your disc, the information is saved in the first available spot that is encountered on the disc. If the information is larger than it could be stored in that free spot, the amount of information that can be saved there, is saved there and the rest of it is saved on the first free spot that is encountered, and so on untill all of the information is saved.
When you try to retrieve that information, it will be reconstructed piece by piece from all the places it was saved. If all the information you try to retrieve would be saved in only one place, the time used to search the places where informations were saved would be zero, so you'd notice an increased speed of retrieving informations.
Defragmentig your drives does just this: retrieves the informations belonging to a files and stores it in just one place. This is done for every file on your drive.
Remember, this has nothing to do with the "logical" places to store files (folders). This is just what happens in your hard drive.

Answer 2

The more you delete information/data from your disk, there are still gaps where that info was. As you continue to write to the disk, it will start filling in spaces, and often a single file/program will be spread in various places...the computer now has to read across a larger portion of the disk to find the same data. Defragging will close up that "blank" space, and depending on the program (the defragger included in Windows isn't the most sophisticated, nor quickest) will connect program/data fragments. Since your computer doesn't have to search as hard over the hard drive, the speed will improve and increase. I don't know if you want to pay for a good program, but I'd say at least try a demo version of Diskkeeper or Perfect Disk...both excellent programs...I was given a copy of O&O Defrag by someone, and I think that's superb as well

Answer 3

Windows places files on your hard drive as they come in. Over time, files that are related to one another become more and more separated from one another. When your computer is using those separated files, it must go from one place to another to read them. The worst of these separations is shown as a red line on your defragmenter's scan results.
Defragmenting moves the files into areas where they are in proximity to one another. You computer will no longer have to look in a very different place to find the next file it needs to perform an operation.
You should defragment your hard drive at least once every 6 months. If you use your computer a lot, you should do it more often.

Because of the way windows file systems are set up, fragmenting will always occur.

Answer 4

Defragging your Hard drive takes all the files on your computer, and puts them back in order, arranges them, and clears them up.
Imagine you have a book case, and everytime you use the computer (read a book), you dont put the books in the righplaces, or leave them scattered about. Defragging will clear up the book case.
To do it, click Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragment
It takes a long time so watch out. Depending on your windows version, the screen will look different. message me if you need help. tom

Answer 5

Good question. Most answers have given a good general description of how it works, but I'd like to add the following to describe what's going on physically:

Background - please skip over the bits you know already:
Inside your computer there's a component called the hard disk. It's rectanglar in shape, about the same size as a paperback novel. The hard-disk stores information permanently (by "permanently", we're talking years but probably not decades - anyway that's good enough for most computers). The hard disk is made of one or more metal platters (each one slightly smaller than a CD). The platters are shiny and brown. Information is stored on the platters magnetically, just like on an old fashioned cassette (tape).
A set of "heads" are used to read and write the information onto the platters. They are mounted on long arms that rotate to move the heads over the surface of the platters. There are usually 2 heads for each platter, one for each side (you can store information on both sides). All the heads move together.

Defragmenting does two things and they're both about physically moving information stored on the platters of the hard-disk:
1) Tries to move all the most commonly-accessed information to the outside of the platters. This is because the surface speed of the platters is faster at the outside, so information can be read more quickly.
2) Tries to collect any dispersed information together. For example, you might have a movie you downloaded from kazaa (or whatever). It's big and has been stored in various places on the platters. When you read the movie back, the heads have to track back and forth over the platters to get to the "next part of the movie". That's slow because the motor (called a "voice coil actuator") for the heads has to continually stop and start them. So, defragmenting tries to collect the entire movie file together.

Defragmenting works, sort of. In practice, Microsoft Windows (and other operating systems) read and write so much information, all the time, that the information will become fragmented very quickly. One thing you can do to help is set the virtual memory to a fixed size:
In Windows XP: Start->Control Panel->System->Advanced (tab)->Performance (Settings button)->Advanced(tab)->Change->Custom size-> set initial size and maximum size to the same number (at least as much as the RAM in your PC, but there's no point in setting it to more than double).
Another good thing is to limit how much Internet Explorer sets aside for temporary internet files (in version 6 - Tools->Internet Options->Temporary Internet Files (Settings). I have this set to 8MB. If you're on dial-up you can set it a bit higher.

In a nutshell - there are more effective techniques to keep your PC running smoothly than defragmenting, but it's good to do once or twice a year.

Answer 6

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Answer 7

defragmenting puts files on your hard drive in logical order. When your hard drive goes searching for something it cuts down on the search time if it is in a logical order rather than in random order.

Answer 8

It takes every thing and squeezes it closer together like 4 guys sitting on a bench taking the bench up they squeeze them together so 2 more guys can sit on the bench

Answer 9

It does, because it arranges you files, etc. in the correct order. and if you download movies they put the movie files in the correct order. You have to do a defragmentation ones every three weeks

Answer 10

that collets all the spread data on the hard disk at one place accept nmoveable files.