What does defragmenting your harddrive mean and do?

Question

How does it help?
How could it be bad, can it be bad?

Answer 1

Over time as you delete and add files and programs to the hard-drive the files can get fragmented, meaning split into varied parts of the hd, instead of stored in contiguous blocks. Defrag puts them back into contiguous blocks. It's a good idea to run Defrag now and then, but not too often, depends how often you delete and then add things on your system. For most people running it a couple of times a year is sufficient.

Answer 2

Defragmenting the hard drive is actually an integral part of your healthy PC! All defrag does is join the split files that may be split my the operating system while storing them. Let's say you open a word file, and then you modify it, the OS doesn't know exactly how much space that particular file will need after the modification, so it splits the file and stores it, as it allocated a lot of space to the file than needed. Defrag thus joins in the split files and makes it easily accessible in the physical storage media.

Answer 3

It rearranges the data on the harddrive so the files/programs are together on the harddrive instead of saved randomly on the harddrive. I can help speed up the computer slightly when loading programs. It doesn't hurt the system., but not running can cause issues if it defragments too much.

Answer 4

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:

1. Moving all the index or directory information to one spot. 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.


It is good to defrag at least once a month, if you wait to long to do a defrag, it can become impossible to get all the files back in order.......

Answer 5

I am defragmenting my harddrive now. I do this every 3 months it is to maintain your computer, you gain speed and your files are properly placed and no longer scattered!

Answer 6

Let's say you had a File Cabinet (your computer) full of Folders containing many thousands of documents...

and someone took them out and threw them all over the floor and they got all mixed up...and now it takes you a very long time to find even one of those files.

If you could "Defrag" them, you would be putting them all back in their proper place, in correct order, so you (the harddrive) could quickly and easily find them again.

Answer 7

an common occasion could be to photograph a closet with a hundred shoe boxes thrown in. De-fragmenting is the equivalent of smartly stacking the shoe boxes in accordance to length. you finally end up with much less perplexing to get entry to shoes and greater attainable area interior the closet. The working device will use area for storing on the problematical force closest to the 'commencing up' of the force. in case you have a 100MB report and there's a 25MB spot open, the OS will "fragment" the report and positioned 25MB interior the open area. while data are fragmented they could take longer to get entry to. over the years with including and deleting data and classes the problematical force can substitute into very fragmented and your device will go through with slower overall performance. De-fragmenting the force will study the quantity of fragmentation and different factors, then initiate shuffling archives around to reconnect the fragmented report components to a minimum of one yet another. it is going to additionally flow all the data to the commencing up of the force, removing a great variety of the small open storage areas to keep away from destiny fragmentation.

Answer 8

I'll make a diagram for you

I'll edit soon