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. And therefore, they often find themselves in a situation where the car begins to shamelessly “slow down” and with extreme reluctance to respond to any commands. As a rule, they are accused of “malicious viruses” that have penetrated the computer, but sometimes the reality is much more prosaic. For example, do you know what defragmentation is and why it is essential for your system? If not, we invite you to read this article.
You should know that all the information on the hard drives does not lie in ordered arrays, but in a rather “free” order. The file system is designed so that any object can be written in fragments (much depends on the size of the cluster), each of which is often located far from each other. Given the spindle speed of modern hard drives, we can say that in most cases there is nothing wrong with that. But how can this information help us know what defragmentation is? Do not rush, as soon we get to this concept.
Problems begin when there are too many such fragments of a large file, and all of them are far scattered from each other. In this case, the load on the read 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: this is the name of the process when all the individual fragments of a file are again located nearby. Thus, not only a fraction of free space is freed up on the hard disk, but also its “mileage” is significantly increased due to the lower 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 there is no need to shell out for them. However, the program for defragmentation in Russian is built into all currently used versions of Windows. To start it, you need to click on the "Start" button, select the "All Programs" submenu, find the "Standard" folder, find the "Utilities" subdirectory and select the "Defragmentation" program in it.
Have you found? Now run it. You will see a fairly concise dialog box in which all the drives available in the system are displayed. Select the required one by left-clicking on it. After that, click on the “Analyze Disk” button and the program for defragmentation will find out how much the files are “scattered”.
If after analysis the percentage of fragmentation is above 14%, it is better to immediately click on the “Disk Defragmenter” button. If this indicator is above 40%, then it must be carried out urgently, since the hard drive is subjected to very serious loads.
Note that with a strong “neglect” of the medium, the process can take a very long time. During this period, it is better not to touch the computer at all. Ideally, you can leave it to "clean up" all night. Of course, it is advisable to worry about the UPS, since power surges at this time are completely useless.
So you find out what defragmentation is!