what exactly does defragmenting do?

Question

my laptop has just said it needs defragmentation done, ive pressed yes and its doing it (although very very slowy), what is this for, and what will happen/change after its done?

Answer 1

it dosent clean up or get rid of any files.
ignore the fools at the top.


it takes all your files and places them physicaly closer to eachother on the hard drive so that the pc is not searching all over the hard drive to find the file you or a game wants.

Answer 2

Defragmenting doesn't get rid of any files nor extra stuff. What it does is reorganize the files that already exist on your computer.

When files are written, the system tries to put the data into contiguous areas on the disk. Sometimes it can't do that, so it'll break the file into pieces and put those pieces on different areas. This is called fragmentation.

Defragmentation looks for those fragmented files and moves things around so that accessing the disk becomes a little faster.

You should delete unneeded files and temporary internet files before running defrag.

Answer 3

Imagine your hard drive as consisting of many little boxes, all the same size. When you write a file to disk, it may be too big to fit in one "box". So Windows breaks it up into smaller chunks, to fit in as many "boxes" as it needs. If not enough adjacent "boxes" are empty, then Windows has to scatter the bits of file all over the disk.

Then, when you call the file back into memory, Windows has to go back to all the file fragments, and put it all back together again.

Defragmentation re-arranges all your files so the bits of file are all together in "contiguous" locations. Windows works quicker, and your disk doesn't get such a thrashing.

You should defrag regularly, say once a month on average, though this varies on how you use your machine.

Answer 4

A computer stores files as it finds space. Much like throwing papers on a desk. These files become fragmented when one file is actually at several different places on your hard disk. De-fragmenting puts these files in a logical order to hopefully speed up accessing them. Newer machines are much faster than the old days, therefore defragmenting is not as important as it used to be and doing a defrag may not improve performance very much unless you have a real gob of stuff on your hard drive.

Answer 5

Before I ever Defrag, I always
Remove all cookies.
Remove all Temporary Files
Empty the 'Recycle Bin'
Your pc is like a big box you throw all your notes in as you go...a right problem if you want to retrieve a specific text, takes ages, could be anywhere. What Defrag does is to get all your notes in order, so you can then retrieve your specific text quickly.
So, it speeds your PC up....
What it does not do is to remove any 'rubbish'
To remove Cookies and Temp internet files read this guide...
http://www.keele.ac.uk/depts/cc/halls/documents/tempfiles.doc

Answer 6

Josh F is right

when your computer saves a file, it can sometimes break a file apart and "fit" it on the hardrive in 2 differant places, because it wouldn't fit in one block, when you defrag, you temporarily transfer information to temp memory, then re-arrange things, so that more files can be saved in one piece, that way your computer can accsess the file a little faster, and doesn't have to jump around to read a file

Answer 7

All it means is it is cleaning out all the files that are junk or you don't use anymore to help clear space on your computer. When done you might notice your computer running a bit smoother than before. Kind of like when a car gets an oil change! That's the best example I can think of, lol.

Answer 8

Imagine an ocean (your hard drive) that is full of rubber duckies of different colors (your data). When the data is written on the drive, it is usually just placed on any available random spot, not paying any attention to the type of data that is being placed. What defragmenting does is to group up similar types of data in order to make the operation of your hard drive more efficient.

Nothing will change, but I recommend doing this when you don't need your machine. I usually run it once a month, overnight.

Answer 9

When you save info on your hard drive, it doesn't save the information in an organized manner. It can write data at the "beginning" of the drive, or anywhere it wants. Defragmenting takes all of those loose fragments of data floating out there and organizes them. It sticks them all together. It is not something you HAVE to do to keep the computer running, but it could speed the access of your applications up.

Answer 10

in the context of administering computers, defragmentation (or defragging) is a technique that reduces the quantity of fragmentation in document structures. It does this via bodily reorganizing the contents of the disk so as to shop the products of each and every document close collectively and so as (contiguously). It additionally tries to create greater suitable areas of unfastened area utilising compaction to hamper the return of fragmentation. some defragmenters additionally attempt to maintain smaller archives interior of a single itemizing collectively, as they're often accessed in series.