If you’re like most people, you probably have a hard drive in your computer that’s full of pictures, music, and videos. But if you’re like me, you also have a lot of data on there that’s not backed up. That’s because Windows 10 doesn’t support defragmentation—the process of moving data around on your hard drive so it’s easier to access and view. Fortunately, there are ways to defragment your hard drive on Windows 10 without having to go through the trouble of restoring everything from scratch. Here are three tips:
- Use an external defragmenter: If you don’t have an internal defragmenter installed on your computer, you can use an external one to help defragment your hard drive. External defragmenters cost around $30-$50, and they can help improve the performance of your computer by moving data around more quickly.
- Use a software program: If you don’t have any other options, some software programs can help improve the performance of your computer by helping to move data around on your hard drive. Some popular programs include Crystal Reports and Microsoft Excel.
- Use a partitioning tool: If you still don’t have any other options, using a partitioning tool can help improve the performance of your computer by dividing up your hard drive into smaller parts so each part is faster to access and view.
Over time, a hard drive can begin to operate with less efficiency due to fragmentation in the file system. To speed up your drive, you can defragment and optimize it in Windows 10 using a built-in tool. Here’s how.
What Is Defragmentation?
Over time, the data blocks (fragments) that make up files can become scattered in multiple locations around the surface of the hard disk. This is called fragmentation. Defragmenting moves all of those blocks so they are located close together in physical space, which potentially speeds up read times when accessing data on the disk. However, with modern computers, defragmentation isn’t the necessity it once was. Windows automatically defragments mechanical drives, and defragmentation isn’t necessary with solid-state drives.
Still, it doesn’t hurt to keep your drives operating in the most efficient way possible. You might also need to defragment external hard disk drives connected via USB, as they may not be plugged in when Windows runs its automatic defragmentation.
RELATED: Do I Really Need to Defrag My PC?
How to Defragment Your Hard Disk on Windows 10
First, press the Windows key or click the search box on your taskbar and type “defragment.” Click the “Defragment and Optimize Your Drives” shortcut in the Start menu.
The Optimize Drives window will appear, and it will list all of the drives in your system that are eligible for optimization and defragmentation. If one of your drives doesn’t show up, it may be because Windows 10 can only optimize drives formatted in the NTFS filesystem. Drives formatted as exFAT will not appear in the list.
RELATED: What’s the Difference Between FAT32, exFAT, and NTFS?
Select the drive you’d like to defragment in the list, then click “Optimize.”
On a hard disk drive, this runs a defragmentation routine. On SSDs, it runs a TRIM command, which can potentially speed up the operation of your drive, but it isn’t really necessary as Windows does this in the background with modern drives.
If the disk needs optimizing and defragmenting, the process will begin. You will see a percentage complete progress indicator in the Current Status column.
When the process is complete, the time in the Last Run column will update, and the Current Status will read something similar to “OK (0% fragmented).”
Congratulations, your drive has been successfully defragmented. If you’d like, you can schedule regular defragmentation sessions in the Optimize Drives window by clicking the “Turn On” button in the “Scheduled Optimization” section. That way, you won’t have to remember to do it manually in the future.
Feel free to close the Optimize Drives window and use your computer as normal—and don’t be surprised if you feel a little extra spring in your computer’s step.
