What is the difference between a "disk cleanup" and a "defrag"?

Answer 1

Best Answer,

Dear Member,
disk cleanup is the processing of cleaning and gaining space on ur HDD and De fragment of disk means making system files and other files in a way that u browse files in a fast way and easy way. when fregment once done u feel new speed to ur boot times and normal browse to ur HDD

thankU

Answer 2

Disk Cleaner is a free tool to quickly and easily free disk space that is used by temporary files like those in the system temporary folder, the Internet Explorer Cache and Cookies folder, and the Recycle Bin.

Defrag is somehow more complicated (totally different aspect):
When you create new file (or even copy a file from any other place), it might be too lsrge to fit in one space on the HDD, so the OS splits the file into pieces to fit in spaces on the HDD.
now imagine that you copy and paste and delete large files randomely, what would happen? a file might get spread all over the HDD, while there might be some space where the file can fit as a whole.

the difrag utiility does the following tasks:
1) collects all the pieces of each file together.
2) collects all the files at the beginning of the HDD

and this is usefull for two things;
1) a one-piece file is faster to read.
2) a file is stored on the HDD faster if it's going to be stored in one location
3) search operation is really really faster if the HDD is defragged

- some HDD errors are fixed while defrag operation in process

Answer 3

A disk cleanup removes files to free up disk space. A defrag gathers bits and pieces of programs or files that have been spread all over the disk. As you open and save files in programs, they tend to get scattered because your PC uses open areas of hard drive space to put parts of these files. When you defrag, it takes all these fragments and puts them back together again. This helps to speed up your PC somewhat because the hard drive doesnt have to look all over the disk for these fragments.

Answer 4

In case you didn't understand what Hassam meant, disk cleanup means to delete the temporary files which are not needed anymore. while defrag is to sort out your files nicely so it's easier and faster to operate.

Answer 5

disk cleanup will delete all temporary file of internet and temporary file of your pc which are many months old and this process will free up some space of your pc and when we use pc regularly the files which is present on pc get fragmented and the pc becomes slow,when we defrag the pc all the files were arranged in proper way and pc gain some speed.

Answer 6

Disk cleanup usually involves removing items from the hard drive.
Defrag just moves the data around, so that files are continuous for faster data access.

Answer 7

disk cleaanup gets rid of incomlete files etc, defagmenting reorgenizes all your files and makes more room on your disk