Do you regularly get an oil change for your car? Just like a car, your computer needs a little bit of maintenance every so often to keep it running smoothly. Many computer users leave out defragmenting their hard drives until their computer slows to a crawl.

Here are a few frequently asked questions regarding disk defragmentation.

What Causes Fragmented Files?

Think of your computer’s hard disk drive as a large warehouse for your data. Every bin in the warehouse represents a file, and the boxes filling the bin represent the bytes of data that make up the file.

In order to ensure fast access to your bins, you want to keep the bins at the front of the warehouse full, so they can be pulled from as quickly as possible. Let’s say, however, that when you get a new shipment of product, you completely fill up the bin, have more boxes of product to store, and the bins next to it are full as well. In most warehouses, the extra product is moved to the back of the warehouse and a note left in the original bin as to where the overstock is stored.

Your computer works in much the same way. Space is allocated on the hard drive to keep each file. To keep your computer running smoothly, files are often stored right next to each other in the first available space. However, if you go back and add a few pages to that story you were writing, the computer doesn’t see any space on the hard drive to store the new data. Therefore, it moves the new data into the next available spot on the hard drive and leaves itself a “note” of sorts as to where the rest of your file is. This splitting of the file into separate pieces is known as “file fragmentation”.

Why Do I Need to Defragment My Hard Drive?

As more and more files get more and more fragmented, it takes the computer longer to access these files, whether you’re opening, editing, or even deleting them. If we revisit our warehouse analogy, when someone purchases the entire stock of a product, the warehouse employees may have to visit 3-4 different bins to fill the order. This same exact thing is happening on your hard drive.

What Will Defragmenting My Hard Drive Achieve?

The disk defragmentation process takes all the pieces of a file and puts them back together in one single spot on the hard drive. Additionally, your file is moved toward the front of the drive so that it can be accessed faster.

How Often To Defragment Your Hard Drive

This is going to depend on how you use your computer. If you access a lot of large files on a frequent basis, chances are your files will fragment more quickly than someone who only checks his e-mail a few times a week. Generally speaking, the average home user should defragment his or her hard drive 4-6 times per year (which is every 2-3 months).

How Do I Defragment My Hard Drive?

If you’re using Windows, there is a built-in utility for performing disk defragmentation. Check the user manual, help files, or do a search for the full procedure. Be warned that it can take a while to complete the process depending on the size of your files and how many files are fragmented.

After the defragmentation process is completed, you should notice that your computer will run much faster.

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