Today, much newer PCs and mobile devices use Solid State Drives (SSD) because SSD read faster; Defragment only works better with Hard Disk Drives (HDD) because it takes more time for the read-and-write head to read all pieces of a file, which may have scattered in many places of the Platter called Fragments.
The more fragments are, the slower your PC is.
That is where defragment comes to help.
These images show how to defragment your drive on Windows 11.
You can also defragment the same steps in Windows 10 and 7, including 8 and 8.1, only slightly different because of the Start full screen.
- Type “Defragment and Optimize Drives” on the Windows search bar as shown on Number 1 Arrow until you can see this app.
- Click on the Defragment-and-Optimize-Drives app as shown in Number 2 Arrow.
3. You will then see the Optimize Drives as shown here.
4. On the Number 1 Arrow, Click the (C:) Drive to highlight in blue.
5. On the Second Arrow, Click on the Analyze button.
After you click this button, you will see the status change to a percentage (%) analyzed on the third arrow, as shown in the image above. Wait until it reaches 100%.
6. After the analysis, in this example image above on the fourth arrow, there are 6% Fragmented.
7. If your drive is not showing 0% Fragmented, Click the Optimize button (The #5 arrow.)
Congrats, you are now defragmenting.
8. On the #6 arrow, You will see % defragmented on some of the files on your drive. When it reaches 100% defragmented, it counts from Pass 1 to 2, starts the defragmented again, then three, and so on, until finally all defragmented of your Drive.
Depending on your drive size and how many files you have, it can be from 10 to thousands of Passes. Which means hours of defragment.
A minimum of 10 Passes is preferred enough to improve HDD speed.
Tech Terms:
Read-and-Write head is a magnetic head that can read or write to or from the Platter.
Platter: a circular magnetic disc that holds data.
Click this link to learn about HDD and SSD,