What is defragmentation and what is it for?

Modern users are often spoiled by powerful computers and inexpensive components to them to such an extent that they do not even know the basic concepts. That is why they often find themselves in a situation where the machine begins to "braked" and with extreme reluctance to respond to any commands. As a rule, they accuse "evil viruses", which penetrated the computer, but the reality is sometimes much more prosaic. For example, do you know what defragmentation is and why is it extremely necessary for your system? If not, then we invite you to read this article.

You should know that all the information on hard drives is not ordered arrays, but in a fairly "free" order. The file system is designed so that any object can be written in scraps (much depends on the size of the cluster), each of which is often located far apart. Given the frequency of rotation of the spindle of modern hard drives, we can say that in most cases, there is nothing wrong with that. But how will this information help us to know what defragmentation is? Do not rush, as soon we will get to this point.

The problems begin when there are too many scraps of a large file, and all of them are far apart from each other. In this case, the load on the reading heads of the disk is so powerful that the access time to some document is seriously slowed down.

And now we learn what defragmentation is: the process is called when all the separate fragments of the file are again located nearby. So the hard disk not only frees up a share of free space, but also significantly increases its "mileage" due to less load on the reader.

Of course, there are many applications for this: some of them are paid, but many are distributed under the GNU license, so you do not have to shell out for them. However, the program for defragmentation in Russian is built into all currently used versions of Windows OS. To start it, you need to click on the "Start" button, select the "All Programs" submenu, find the "Standard" folder, find the "Service" subdirectory and select the "Defragmentation" program in it.

Found? Now run it. Before you will be a fairly concise dialog box in which all the drives in the system are displayed. Select the desired one by clicking on it with the left mouse button. After that, click on the "Analyze disk" button - and the program for defragmenting will find out how much "scattered" the files are.

If after the analysis the fragmentation percentage is higher than 14%, then it is better to immediately click on the "Disk Defragmentation" button. If this figure is above 40%, then it should be urgently carried out, since the hard drive is subjected to very serious loads.

Note that with a strong "neglect" of the media, the process can take a very long time. During this period, the computer is better not to touch at all. Ideally, you can leave it "clean up" for the whole night. Of course, it is advisable to worry about UPS, as the voltage surges at this time is completely useless.

So you found out what defragmentation is!