How to defrag your hard drive

How to defrag your hard drive

How to Defrag Your Hard Drive

disk defrag windows xp

When was the last time you defragged your hard drive? If you’re like most computer users, it’s probably been a long time. If you answered, “Never,” or, “I don’t even know what that is!” we’re going to show you, now.

What is defragging?

In simplest terms, it’s taking all the bits and pieces of information stored on your hard disk and reorganizing them. Think of your computer’s hard disk as a big closet where everything gets tossed. Shoes, clothes, old cell phones, other gadgets and odds and ends… After a while, people just tend to close the door and forget that room exists, but sooner or later, you’re going to need something in there. As you go digging, you’ll come across an unpaired shoe, or a tangled up extension cord or two, an AC adapter to some appliance you don’t remember owning… It’s going to take a while to find everything you need. Time to clean it out!

Now imagine your computer’s hard disk looks the same way. Files get jumbled up, parts and pieces get moved around, stuff that used to be important gets pushed to the back to make room for new stuff that’s important… As the computer searches for pictures, emails and other programs you don’t use very often, it seems to take a long time. Defragging is your computer’s way of cleaning out the closet!

So, now that you know how important it is, and if you’d like your computer to run a little bit faster, read on to learn how.

How to defrag your hard drive in Windows XP

Before starting, make sure all open files and applications are closed. This is a resource intensive operation that will be moving large amounts of data around on your hard drive, so make sure nothing will interrupt it.

Open My Computer and right-click on the C: drive. Select  Properties, then click on the tab marked Tools. Select Defragment Now.

The colored bar in the disk defragger window will tell you how fragmented your hard drive is and how far is must go before the process is done. Once it finishes, close the window and resume normal computer operation. Congratulations! You’ve defragmented your hard disk in Windows XP.

How to defrag your hard drive in Windows 7

The easiest way to run disk defrag is to click on the Start button and type “disk defragmenter” in the search box.

Select a disk and click on the Defragment Disk button. Note that you can abort the defragmentation at any time by clicking the Stop Operation button. When the operation is complete, click Finish.

And that’s it! Now you know how to defrag your hard drive. Just remember to run disk defrag every so often (or schedule it for a specific time, as you can do with Windows 7) to keep your computer running smoothly. If you found this tip helpful, let us know!