You have to defrag C drive on your computer, but you don’t know how to go about it. Moreover, you have heard people saying that they have been unsuccessful in defragmenting C drive. So you wonder if you really have to go forward and defrag the drive, or let the hard drive just be.
Why do you have to defrag hard drive?
Files present in the hard drive get fragmented over time. This slows down the computer, and its performance is affected. It happens because the system has to check multiple places on the drive for the fragments / pieces. Thus, in order to make your computer run more efficiently, you need to defragment the files.
When do you have to defrag hard drive?
Fragmentation will not slow down your PC as much as it used to; or at least until it is very fragmented. Still, you should defrag the system for efficient performance. However, your computer might automatically defrag files on a schedule. This doesn’t often run consistently. So if files take longer to load, then you can check how fragmented the drive is. Also, if you have a Solid State drive in your computer, then you don’t have to defrag it.
How to defrag C drive?
Windows 8 and 7 automatically defrags hard drives on a schedule. If you want to check if its working fine, then open Start menu, type defrag, hit Enter. In Windows Disk Defragmenter, check if its running on a schedule. It should show if there are any fragments on the drive, and when it was last run.
To defrag C drive on Windows 7, follow these steps –
- Go to My Computer, right click on C drive and click Properties
- In the Properties dialog box that opens up, click Tools tab
- Under Defragmentation, click on Defragment Now button
- Next click on Analyze Disk button
- Wait till Windows checks the defragmentation on the drive, and lists percentage of fragmented files
- Next click on Defragment Disk button (Don’t try to do anything else on your system while media is being defragmented)
- Once the process is completed, click on Close Also, close other windows opened.
To defrag C drive on Windows 8 / 10, follow these steps –
- Go to This PC, right click Local Disk (C: ), and select Properties
- Navigate to Tools tab
- In the displayed interface, under Optimize and defragment drive, click on Optimize button
- In the Optimize Drives box, make sure that C drive is selected
- Click the Analyze button present below the list
- Wait till Windows completes the analysis, and lists the percentage of fragmented files in C drive
- Once the analysis is completed, hit the Optimize button to start with the defragmentation
- Wait till the process is completed, restart the computer, and start using it
There are times when you are unable to defrag C drive completely. Or, even after running it many times, it is still very fragmented. Under this situation, sometimes, you need to delete files to free up space, and then boot in Safe mode followed by defrag process. If in a hurry you delete important files from C drive, then use Yodot File recovery tool to retrieve deleted files from C drive in just a short while.
What about defragging Mac?
Well, if you use Mac system, then you don’t probably need to manually defragment the storage space. OS X defrags the drive automatically.
