What is Disk Fragmentation? Think of your hard drive as a filing cabinet where files are arranged in an orderly manner, say, alphabetically. When files in that cabinet are arranged that way, you can easily find what you are looking for. However, after some time, you will be pulling out files or adding new files, they are often not properly arranged anymore. Finding files in a messed up filing cabinet surely takes a lot longer compared to one that is properly arranged. The same thing applies to a hard disk. At first, files on your drive are arranged contiguously. After some time, you decide to add more programs, games, and other files, delete some of them, and add new ones, causing those files to become messed up inside your drive. When that happens, your computer will take much more time in finding those files. The files are still stored in the hard disk; however, it will just take much longer to find them. As you keep on adding and removing files in your hard drive, fragmentation will continue to worsen.
Signs of Disk Fragmentation As previously stated, fragmentation generally slows down your computer (Tips on how to get rid of computer slowness). However, there are several other signs and symptoms that will surely let you know that your computer's hard drive is fragmented.
•Very slow startup and shutdown. This is one of the first things you will notice when suffering from fragmentation. You clearly remember when you bought your computer, booting and shutting it down used to take only a few seconds. Now it takes several minutes. This is because your computer spends a lot of time loading those fragmented files that are needed.
•Slow loading of software. Opening a web browser, word processor, image editor, or your favorite computer game (In case you're wondering, these are the Top ten best pc games ever) should only take a few seconds. In a fragmented hard drive, the process will take even longer, depending on how severely fragmented the files of those software are.
•Frequent software crashes or unresponsiveness. This is a given effect and a sign of fragmentation. This happens because your computer devotes its available resources to search for the parts of the file scattered all over the disk. It then consumes available resources that are needed by that application, causing it to hang or even crash in some cases.
Disk Fragmentation and CD / DVD Burning Disk fragmentation can also pose serious problems if you often use your CD or DVD burner since the process of “burning” or recording data into an optical media requires a steady stream of data from the hard disk. A badly fragmented disk will not be able to achieve that. When that requirement is not provided, CD or DVD burning will fail. When that happens, no matter how much data has already been recorded, the disc will be rendered useless. Though there are protective measures like “Buffer-Underrun” protection, it can only do so much.
Getting Rid of Disk Fragmentation The best and easiest way to get rid of disk fragmentation is to use a certain type of software known as a defragmenter. A defragmenter or “defragger” will make sure that there is very minimal fragmentation, making your computer as fast as it was before.
How Defragmenting Software Works A defragmenting software program works by arranging the fragmented files contiguously, meaning the scattered parts of a file are placed continously. This process is like putting back together a broken plate, where the plate is the file on the hard disk. The process involves the scanning of the entire disk to determine which files are fragmented. After that, it proceeds to the actual defragmenting process. What it basically does is it makes use of the available free space to gather and copy the fragmented files and put them back together. It deletes the fragmented files and replaces them with the defragmented copy. Defragmenting software will work best if there is enough free space available on the fragmented disk. Most software recommends having at least 20 percent free disk space or more. More free space makes the process more effective and faster to complete. Most third-party defrag programs come with a very useful feature that automatically monitors and defragments a hard disk. A good example is Executive Software's Diskeeper that has the “Set it and Forget it” feature so you don't have to manually defrag every now and then.
The Right Defragmenting Software Operating systems like Windows have built-in defragmenting software. However, it is very limited in terms of features and often takes a lot of time to complete. If you are looking for better defragmenting software, there are a lot of alternatives, both free and commercial ones. Here are some of the features you should look for:
•Ease of use. Defragmenting should not be a difficult task. You should look for one that is very easy to use, where it allows you to easily defragment your hard drive in just a few clicks of your mouse.
•Defragmenting scheduling. Defragmenting often uses a lot of system resources. You cannot defrag when you are using your computer to edit multimedia files, play computer games, burning CDs or DVDs. It is also not good to defrag if you are using a laptop and you are running on batteries. The software you should look for must be able to detect these factors and defrag only when you are not using resource-intensive applications, or when a laptop computer is plugged into the outlet.
•Fast defragmenting. Though defragmenting time varies depending on the amount of fragmentation, it should not take so long to finish. Read feedback and reviews on how fast the software works before you buy it. Most commercial software comes with trial periods, so try out how well it performs first.
After defragmenting, your computer should run like new again!