How to Defragment a Hard Drive

By eHow Computers Editor

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Data on a hard disk drive can become "fragmented" from information being written to the drive many times. The operating system keeps track of where the data for each program and file is stored on the drive, but to reduce the search time, you must perform a "defragmentation" to place all of that data in a contiguous area on the hard disk drive.

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Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

Step1

Click on "Start" in the lower-left corner of the desktop screen. Select "My Computer" from the menu.

Step2

Right-click on the "Local Disk (C:)" icon in the "Hard Disk Drives" section. Select "Properties" in the drop-down menu.

Step3

Choose the "Tools" tab located at the top of the form. Click on the "Defragment Now" button on the form.

Step4

Select the drive to defragment from the drives in the grid.

Step5

Hit the "Defragment" button located near the bottom of the form. The system will analyze the drive and then start the defragmentation.

Step6

Repeat steps 4 and 5 to defragment other disk drives.

Tips & Warnings

If a problem occurs during the defragmentation, Windows will display an error message about what to do next. It is advisable that you follow these instructions if the error message does appear. Alternatively, you could run the error-checking program before running the disk defragmentation program to determine if any errors exist on the hard drive.

Who Can Help:

Resources

Visit the Microsoft website to learn more about defragmentation.

Comments

poseidon said

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on 8/15/2007 With newer automatic defragmenters like Diskeeper Pro, manual defragmentation is no longer necessary. Once the automatic mode is enabled, Diskeeper automatically checks the drives for fragmentation levels and acts whenever required. I have been using Diskeeper for the past four months and it has never let me down. Works brilliantly- my drives take care of themselves- and I never need to waste time on defragging.

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