Hello, friends! In this article, it will be on how to defragment hard drives in windows 7? Why do you need defragmenting disks in windows 7? Quite an important role in optimization operating system is defragmenting hard drives, why defragment at all, you ask? We all use a computer, download films, programs, games, create various documents, folders.

All this takes up a certain amount of space on the hard disk in the form of clusters and follows one after the other sequentially, of course, the hard disk is not rubber and over time we delete what we no longer need, then the process of storing and deleting files is repeated over and over again.

I will put it simply in my own words, after all such manipulations with deleting files, storing and again deleting, the order of the sequence of clusters is lost and the heads hard disk it takes more time to read and write information, which naturally leads to a decrease in the performance of the system and programs.

For this, disks are defragmented in order to streamline the continuous sequential arrangement of clusters. Defragmentation in windows 7 can be done using the built-in utility or you can use free programs. Let's take a look at everything in order.

Defragmentation in windows 7 using the built-in utility. Click on the "Start" menu button and in the search bar write "Defragmentation". The "Disk Defragmenter" window will appear, press the "Analyze Disk" button and after the analysis of the disks has been completed, click the "Disk Defragmenter" button. Of course, few people use the built-in utility in windows 7 when there are many programs available on the Internet. For example, I use the program Auslogics Disk Defrag.

There is a great free program Auslogics Disk Defrag with the help of this program, the defragmentation process itself is faster and a graphical table is provided where we can see the progress of the analysis and defragmentation process. This is how the window of this program looks like. Click on the "Defragment" arrow and select the "Analysis" tab.

After analyzing the program, my graphical table looks like this. As you can see, the percentage of disks defragmentation will be: on drive "C" one percent, and on drive "D" six percent - this is because I recently defragmented disks, but you may have a much higher percentage. At the bottom, click on the "Defragment Disks" tab.

After defragmentation, as you can see, the table has changed, the program defragmented, now the speed of reading and writing the hard disk will be faster, naturally the performance of the system and programs has increased. Try to produce defragmentation in windows 7 at least once a month.

Defragmenting the hard drive

Good afternoon, dear readers! Tell me, when you bought your computer, did it turn on quickly or took a long time? Of course quickly! If it turned on for a long time, and even slowed down during operation, then most likely you would not buy it. Right? Tell me, does your computer turn on just as quickly now? Probably not if you are reading this article. If you start to notice a delay when turning on your computer, then it is not necessary to immediately reinstall Windows, as many do. Try defragmenting your hard drive. Whether you've heard the word "defragmentation" before or not, you already want to know more about what it is. Today you will learn what hard disk defragmentation is. in simple words and what it is for.

Read also,.

Let's see what defragmentation is for. When you buy a computer or when you have just installed Windows on a formatted hard drive, then all the files (including system ones) necessary for the operating system to work lie next to each other. In addition, each file consists of sequential clusters written to the hard drive. In short, everything is located ideally conveniently for reading information from the hard drive.

Defragmentation process

But! Time passes. You install new programs many times, uninstall old ones, perhaps even remove some system components, write movies, music, photos, and so on to your hard drive. As a result, even if your computer is in order, the location of the files on your hard drive turns into a hard mess.

Imagine your room. Let's say it is a mess and all things are out of place. How quickly can you go on a date with a girl in such conditions? That's the same! Only in the event of a mess in your room, you can find socks on the chandelier, for example, which is not so scary. But on a computer, such a mess looks worse. Imagine that you found one sock on a chandelier, half of the second sock in the bed under the pillow, and the other half of the second sock was found torn into 17 pieces and scattered throughout the room. In such conditions, your computer is going to meet with you every time you turn it on. Therefore, you wait so long for it to turn on. He urgently needs to collect all the socks, and sew those that are torn. You need to defragment your hard drive!

Conclusion on defragmentation:

Fragmented file - a file divided into fragments (chunks) and dispersed throughout the hard disk space.

File defragmentation is the process of assembling a fragmented file into one whole file.

Defragmenting a hard drive is the process of defragmenting files on a hard drive and collecting them in one place in an easy-to-read order.

By the way, only the hard disk drive (HDD) needs defragmentation, and if you have a solid-state drive (SSD) installed instead, it doesn't need defragmentation. Moreover, it is harmful to him! Read the article about “

Notice that your computer is getting slower and slower and you want to fix it?

There is a way to increase its performance by as much as 65%. Do you think this is fantastic? Not at all! It's easy to turn on the defragmenter and clean up your hard drive. After all, if data is scattered around it in an arbitrary way, it slows down the operation of the entire system.

Why defragmentation?

When copied to a new hard drive, files are written as a chain of sequential clusters. And after a few weeks - after uninstalling unnecessary applications, deleting "used" folders, etc. - file fragments are scattered throughout the hard drive. No, the files are not damaged - just their parts are written far from each other, in different clusters! In the process of reading a defragmented file, the disk head has to travel a long way from one fragment to another every time, and this path can be long. As a result, the computer slows down.

Why are files split into chunks?

Frequent saving and deletion of files, for example, during video processing, creates free spaces on the hard disk, which are filled with new files over time. If the file to be recorded does not fit into such a gap entirely, it is divided into parts.

What Happens During Defragmentation?

During the defragmentation process, file fragments scattered across the hard disk are ordered: clusters are organized in such a way that individual file fragments are, if possible, located sequentially, one after another. In addition, all data is moved to the beginning of the hard disk, and free space is located at the end.

What does regular hard drive defragmentation give?

At high level fragmentation of data organizing information on the hard disk using special utility will allow you to download programs and files faster. Sometimes defragmentation can help improve performance in resource-intensive 3D games - it is associated with faster graphics loading. The speed of writing to disk also increases, for example, when installing new programs or after removing previously installed ones.

How often should you defragment?

It depends on how much time you spend at the computer every day and what operations you perform.

If your area of ​​activity is limited office programs and by e-mail, the fragmentation of data on the hard disk will grow rather slowly. Therefore, defragmentation should be done not very often - about once a month.

If you use resource-intensive applications that require a lot of disk space to work - these include, for example, video editing programs and 3D games with complex graphics - then defragmentation is recommended more often. It is better to do this weekly, and also every time before installing a new one. software... Background Optimizer monitors a state of tough disk and, if necessary, perform defragmentation automatically when the computer is not in use.

Many people who use a computer are constantly faced with this problem. In the first months after installing the operating system or purchasing a new computer, a minute was enough for the computer to be fully operational after turning on. Loading the system takes a few minutes.

However, over time (especially the technique that has already served for several years suffers from this), turning on the computer takes more and more time. And in the process of work, the system continues to "slow down".
One of the main reasons that leads to problems is the fragmentation of data on the hard disk (hard drive). Read about how to choose a hard drive in. Of course, there are other reasons for the slow operation of the operating system, but fragmentation is the main thing. So,

What is Disk Defragmenter?

To make it easier to understand the essence of the phenomenon, we will give next example... Imagine that you went into the forest to pick mushrooms. And suddenly you see that all the mushrooms grow in one line and you don't have to look for them all over the forest - you just walk in a straight line and collect. It is clear that in half an hour your basket will be full of these wonderful gifts of the forest. However, in reality, mushrooms grow throughout the forest, so your hike will last much longer.

The mushroom example is great for simulating a data situation on a hard drive. While it is empty, the system writes files in one "portion", one file fragment after another, so data reading is fast, because the magnetic head on the drive does not need to waste time on transitions from one fragment to another.

Over time, when deleting old data and adding new ones, the system writes files in fragments, that is, splitting them into separate fragments, puts them in those cells that are on this moment are free. Of course, the search for information with this approach takes longer - it's like looking for mushrooms scattered throughout the forest.

Several pictures to explain what fragmentation is.

Clean hard drive (no files).

Then it was completely filled with different files (files are shown in different colors).

And now we write to an empty space new file, which is so large that it does not fit into individual empty spaces. As you can see our red file fragmented(i.e. broke into fragments).

When reading with a magnetic head, it will be forced to "jump" from one fragment to another, which takes time and such a file will take longer to read.

It should be noted that in this case we are talking only about magnetic drives (HDD designation), since the read head often has to change its position. Another variety - solid-state drives (designation SSD) - have a completely different principle of reading and their this problem does not apply. But now a large number of computers use HDD, primarily due to the high cost of solid state drives. To find out what type of hard drive is in your computer, consult with your PC dealer or assembler.

So, in order to speed up the reading of data (and therefore the work of the computer), you need to collect individual fragments of files into one whole and then consider the question of how to defragment the disk. For this purpose, there are a huge number of free software, which anyone can download on the Internet, but we will act using standard means Windows OS. Let's consider each action step by step. We work in windows 7. The program for defragmenting the hard disk is built into the operating system.

Disk Defragmenter

Click on "My Computer". Right button mouse click on the hard disk that needs defragmentation (for example, local disk C).

If you have multiple hard drives, you can do the same operation for each of them separately. Then go to the "Properties" menu.

Defragmentation requires at least 15% free space about the total volume of the hard drive. Be sure to check this before starting the procedure. If there is not enough free space, you can transfer some of the information to an external drive or, if you have several hard drives, transfer information to it. However, almost always, if you dig deep into the folders, you can find a bunch of unnecessary files and just delete them.

Then click on the "Service" tab and left-click on the "Defragment" button.
The system will prompt you to analyze the hard disk for fragmented files. After viewing the statistics, if there is a need for defragmentation, simply start the process using the appropriate button.

The defragmentation process can take quite a long time - from one to several hours, depending on the number of files and their fragmentation. It should be noted that defragmentation can take several hours, depending on the amount of data and how fragmented it is. For example, you can run this process before going to bed, and in the morning your computer will "fly" and there will be no trace of annoying freezes!

By the way, you can defragment and.

HDD is one of the most important components of a computer, but not all users pay due attention to it. If the processor, video card fails, random access memory and other components, they can be replaced quite simply, while with a breakdown of the drive, the owner of the computer will lose all his data, which obviously no one wants. To avoid a hard drive failure, you must carefully monitor it and regularly defragment it.

What is Disk Defragmenter

The defragmentation process is very simple and very important, but many people forget about the need to carry it out. It organizes the files on your hard drive so that the operating system can access them more easily and quickly when requested.

During the operation of the hard disk, it constantly appears new information... The user downloads files from the Internet, installs programs and games, creates new documents and performs a number of other tasks. When information is stored on a hard disk, it occupies a certain number of free clusters on it. At the moment of deleting, changing, copying files, the clusters are cleared, but free space is formed between one file and another on the hard disk. Disk defragmentation is necessary to organize the files on the disk, and they were sequentially going one after another, and there were no free clusters between them.

Disk defragmentation on Windows must be performed because:

Some users are aware of the need for defragmentation, but do not perform it. This is due to the fact that this process is very lengthy, and it can take up to ten hours to organize files on a volume drive. At the same time, the procedure time can be significantly reduced, for this it is enough to perform it on a monthly basis, as recommended by hard drive manufacturers. The more often you defragment, the less data on the drive will have to be moved, and therefore the process will be faster.

Important: You only need to defragment on hard drives with a rotating head, whereas it is useless on SSDs. Defragmenting a solid-state drive will only reduce the number of write cycles to it, but will not give a performance gain.

How to defragment a disk

To defragment a disk, you need to start the appropriate process. Operating room Windows system contains a special tool that allows you to defragment your hard drive. Unfortunately, it is not perfect and in most cases it is more convenient to use third party utilities. Various programs contain their own algorithms for defragmenting the drive. Below we will give an example of several such applications and show you how to do the job of organizing clusters using the system tools.

Defragmenting your hard drive using Windows

If you are wondering how to defragment a disk in Windows 10 or more earlier versions operating system, it is quite easy to do this. To run the standard defragmentation tool, you must:

Please note that in this menu item you can also configure the "Scheduled optimization". When choosing the appropriate item, it is necessary to set the frequency of the process and the hard disk / disks that will be subjected to it. After that, the system will automatically defragment the drive according to the selected schedule.

Hard disk defragmentation software

There are dozens of applications that allow you to defragment your hard drive. Each of them has its own pros and cons. Some are better suited for large hard drives or storage drives that are installed on servers, while others are better for home use. Below we suggest looking at a couple of free hard drive defragmenter programs.

The simplest and most convenient application to defragment your hard drive on home computer Is Defraggler. The free version of the program, which can be downloaded from the official website of the developers, does not have wide functionality, but it copes with its main task.

The application is officially localized into Russian, and it allows you to defragment not only the entire disk, but also a separate program or folder. The program also provides an option with fast disk defragmentation.

Auslogics Disk Defrag free- this is free version application of the same name from the company Auslogics. You can also download it from the official website of the developers. The application is a little more functional than Defraggler, and it does not have a Russian language, which is why it is more difficult to work with it. At the same time, the program has a number of functions that are not available in the official hard disk optimization tool from Windows and in the Defraggler application.