Computer Maintenance: Defragmenting
One of the easiest things you can do to improve your computer’s performance is to defragment the hard drive – if your computer needs it! Let’s learn about fragmentation and how to fix it!
On a hard disk drive, commonly abbreviated as HDD, data is stored in little pieces. When your computer needs to do something with that file, it has to find and assemble all of the pieces before anything else can happen. Think about it like a jigsaw puzzle. If you have all of the pieces numbered and laid out in order, the puzzle could be assembled very quickly. If those pieces are all jumbled around, it’s going to take you a lot longer to assemble the puzzle. Fragmentation on your hard drive is similar. As you use your computer, those little pieces continue to get more and more jumbled around and things continue to move slower.
So how do we fix it? Integration Technologies Inc. likes the free tool called Defraggler. You can find the download link on our resourcespage. Simply download, install and run the program. With the software open, click the Defrag button at the bottom and let it run. This could take a while, so leave your computer on and go have a cup of coffee.
What if you have a Solid State Drive (SSD)? You may have read that defragmenting a solid state drive shortens the life of the drive and doesn’t help performance. That is true with many defragmenting programs. However, Defraggler recognizes solid state drives and can utilize some of their built-in functions to optimize the drive’s performance. You won’t see the same performance gain you get from defragmenting a mechanical hard drive, but it can help. Most importantly, you won’t be causing harm to your SSD when using defraggler!
Scott Johnston | Integration Technologies, Inc. | www.myiti.com