what is the meaning of 'Defragmentation' of hard drive?

Answer 1

Fragmented files are files that have been split up throughout the hard drive. Defragmenting rearranges them so they are concurrent.

Answer 2

Locates and consolidates fragmented boot files, data files, and folders on local volumes.
Syntax

defrag volume

defrag volume [/a]

defrag volume [/a] [/v]

defrag volume [/v]

defrag volume [/f]

Remarks
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A volume must have at least 15% free space for defrag to completely and adequately defragment it. Defrag uses this space as a sorting area for file fragments. If a volume has less than 15% free space, defrag will only partially defragment it. To increase the free space on a volume, delete unneeded files or move them to another disk.
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You cannot defragment volumes that the file system has marked as dirty, which indicates possible corruption. You must run chkdsk on a dirty volume before you can defragment it. You can determine if a volume is dirty by using the fsutil dirty query command. For more information about chkdsk and fsutil dirty, see Related Topics.
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While defrag is analyzing and defragmenting a volume, it displays a blinking cursor. When defrag is finished analyzing and defragmenting the volume, it displays the analysis report, the defragmentation report, or both reports, and then exits to the command prompt.
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By default, defrag displays a summary of both the analysis and defragmentation reports if you do not specify the /a or /v parameters.
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You can send the reports to a text file by typing >filename.txt, where filename.txt is a file name you specify. For example:

defrag volume /v >filename.txt
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To interrupt the defragmentation process, at the command line, press CTRL+C.
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Running the defrag command and Disk Defragmenter are mutually exclusive. If you are using Disk Defragmenter to defragment a volume and you run the defrag command at a command-line, the defrag command fails. Conversely, if you run the defrag command and open Disk Defragmenter, the defragmentation options in Disk Defragmenter are unavailable.

Answer 3

The purpose of Windows Disk Defragmenter is to optimize the time it takes to read and write files to/from the disk by minimizing head travel time and maximizing the transfer rate. The used techniques include:

Moving all the index or directory information to one spot. 1. Moving this spot into the center of the data, i.e. one third of the way in, so that head travel to data is halved compared to having directory information at the front.
2. Clustering files around the directory area.
3. Moving infrequently used files further from the directory area.
4. Obeying a user provided table of file descriptions to emphasize or ignore.
5. Making files contiguous so that they can be read without unnecessary seeking.

Answer 4

It means that files of your diffirent applications on your hard drive are scattered in random locations -fragmented. So to defrag means to put like files with like applications on the hard drive .

Answer 5

Check out the URL below:

This is how Microsoft recommends defragmenting a hard drive....

Hope this helps...