When your machine is new or you’ve performed a clean installation all the files are fairly well neatly laid out on the hard disk:
When you run a program and create a new file, edit an existing file, uninstall a program you no longer need, or even when you go online, then gaps appear in the way files are laid out on the disk. The process of continually creating, extending and deleting files causes your hard disk files to become fragmented, which means that pieces of a file are stored here, with some pieces there, and a few pieces all the way over there. Over time, many files are fragmented and poor disk performance becomes noticeable:
Usually it’s normal, everyday use slows that Windows down. In this article we look at file fragmentation and what can be done about it.
Personal computers have been around for 35 years or more. In that time the speed of the Central Processing Unit (CPU) has increased almost exponentially. However hard disk speeds have not kept up, even though hard disks have been gaining greater capacity. In simple terms this means that your CPU has to twiddle its thumbs anywhere up to 60,000 times a second while it waits for the hard disk to do something, and that’s assuming no fragmentation.
Some websites will tell you that, if you have a laptop, you should partition your hard disk so that you have a separate system and data partition, and if you have a desktop they’ll tell you to stick in another hard disk, again to separate your data from system files. However kadaitcha.cx is very dubious about this advice. The reason is that applications store their temporary data in specific locations on the system drive.
Moving your personal files to another drive is not going to make any noticeable difference to disk fragmentation on the system drive; this is especially true if your files are mostly static, such as saved emails, family photos and a music collection or similar. There is absolutely no need for a power user, never mind a home user, trying to separate their personal files from system files. Also, it is not a simple task to tell Windows that your personal files are not in their default places; in fact it is downright messy and can be confusing. There is more danger in this advice than there is benefit.
If you’re a home user, leave your personal files where they are and backup regularly. If you want to see how complex it is to move the typical culprits of file fragmentation then take a look at SSD Performance Tip #4 on this page.
While Windows 7 tries to minimise disk input/output (I/O) and writes data in the largest possible chunks, file fragmentation is a fact of life. The best thing about the Windows 7 disk defragmenter is that once you’ve set a preferred schedule you don’t need to do anything else. The defragmenter will run automatically in the background. If you’re in the habit of switching your machine off at night then it’s a good idea to set the schedule and leave it switched on once a week and simply log out to give the defragmenter the time and opportunity to run.
Changing the Defragmentation Schedule
In the Windows Start menu search bar, type defrag:
Click Disk Defragmenter. Don’t click on the application named Defrag; this is a command line version of the defragmenter.
Click Configure schedule. The scheduling window opens:
Set the desired defragmentation frequency, day, time, and disks if you have more than one hard disk. Click OK. That’s it. Set and forget.
You can also defragment your drives manually; simply click the Defragment disk button:
If you want to defragment your disk, you do not have to click the Analyse disk button. Disk analysis is only useful if you want to know how fragmented the disk is.
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