What does disk defragmenting accomplish?

Question

I had to restore my system yesterday, but I didn't really lose anything, except for some hard drive space. Someone suggested defragmenting. What does this do?

Answer 1

This is your hard drive before a disc defragment...

00000 0000000 000000 000 0 000000 00000000 0000 00 0 00 00 0 0000 0000

And this is your hard drive after a disc defragment...
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

Answer 2

Defragging a hard drive will clean up the space.

Think of a hard drive as the floor in a house of kids. They leave stuff all over the place for people to trip over.

Well defragging a hard drive is like cleaning up after those kids.
It puts all the files together and cleans the space left to add more files.

Defragging a drive also speeds up the response to the request from the ram(Memory)

Answer 3

Defragmenting takes all of the file fragments that the computer has been placing in random sectors as it performs it's tasks, such as saving a large file, saving a small file, reserving a block for your open files to make temporary backups (which are deleted when you close the software), etc.

If you think of your hard drive as a checkerboard, when it defragments, it takes each of the current fragments, measures them, and puts them into spaces that they fit in so that the "used" space on your drive is all filled in smoothly, with minimal (or no) gaps.

This makes your computer run more quickly because when it is tasking, after it's defragmented, the process of looking for a contiguous piece of real estate to drop things off and pick things up from is much, much easier. All of the free space is clear and all of the used space is compactly organized.

The time it takes depends on how fragmented it is, but once you've done it, make it part of your monthly or quarterly maintenance.

Like hanging your clothes back up so you can see the floor of your room. Sure helps when you're rushing to get dressed! :)

Answer 4

severe fragmentation really can slow things down. Fragmentation refers to the way files are physically located on the hard disk's rapidly spinning surfaces. For some crazy reason, in normal use, files get fragmented. That means that fragments of what you see as a single file, mypaper.doc for example, are actually scattered around in different places on the drive. When you defragment a hard drive, the fragments are relocated in a more efficient way. Windows XP and 2000 both have defragmenting utilities.
so bascily put all the files back in order so when you need then you can access them quicker

Answer 5

Windows Disk Defragmenter is a computer program included in Microsoft Windows designed to increase access speed (and sometimes increase the amount of usable space) by rearranging files stored on a disk to occupy contiguous storage locations, or defragmenting. The purpose 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, By:
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.
Clustering files around the directory area.
Moving infrequently used files further from the directory area.
Obeying a user provided table of file descriptions to emphasize or ignore.
Making files contiguous so that they can be read without unnecessary seeking

Answer 6

Simply defragmenting won't buy you space but could improve performance by making sure that all pieces (fragments) of a file are one right after the other on the disk.

Answer 7

OK here it is in simple terms, you know how when your room is messy and stuff is thrown all over the floor? Wel thats what happens in a computer, files are scattered and take up a lot of space. Defragmenting is like taking all the stuff ont the floor and pushing it all into one little corner of the room to save space.

Answer 8

Disk Defragmentaion is a gadget which you will use to help your annoying stress. As you open classes, archives, ect. the counsel is placed on your reminiscence for the duration of use. whilst your pc now no longer desires this archives it basically replaces it interior the annoying stress the place ever there is area. the counsel finally ends up all over the annoying stress because of this. the subsequent time you get entry to this equipment or document, the pc has to seek throughout for the counsel. This gadget takes all those areas of archives scattered around and places all of them so as. It makes your pc swifter. you ought to defrag your pc on a month-to-month foundation. except you utilize your pc each and every of the time then i might do it weekly.

Answer 9

Disk Defragmenter consolidates fragmented files and folders on your computer's hard disk, so that each occupies a single, contiguous space on the volume. As a result, your system can gain access to your files and folders and save new ones more efficiently. By consolidating your files and folders, Disk Defragmenter also consolidates the volume's free space, making it less likely that new files will be fragmented.

Answer 10

It condenses all of your stuff so the computer runs more efficiently. Let's say that you have a horribly messy bedroom, and every time you want to play a video game, you have to hunt around, TV's over there, console's over here, one controller under the bed, game in the closet, etc. It's like that in a computer -- it strews parts of files all over. Defragmenting is making the machine clean its room, so to speak, so everything's all grouped together and it can find it all better.