Why do we defrag the Hard

Disk?
What is Defragging?

Defragging is process done to a hard disk in order to improve performance and

recover some lost disk space. Defragging is an essential part of a PC’s upkeep as it
keeps all the data on your hard disk in an easily readable order. If a hard disk is left
without defragging, then over time the disk will begin to lose performance and also
slowly reduce the available capacity to data. As you will be aware if your hard disk is
running slowly then this will affect the rest of the system performance, in all
applications and especially in games, where frame rate is important.

How does Defragging improve performance?

When you defrag your hard disk you re-arrange the order in which the data is stored
on the drive. The PC will arrange the data so that data that belongs together and
needs to be read together is actually put in the same place on the drive. The obvious
question here is why doesn’t the PC store the data in the correct way in the first
place? In an ideal situation (such as a blank disk) the PC would do these as a first
option. However with the amount of data being deleted and wrote to the disk every
second the PC is on it is no wonder that the data cannot be stored together.

Lets have a look at an example. Say you write 3 files to a disk all 10Mb in size the
data would be all in a line each 10mb block after the other. This is how your PC
would prefer to store the data for maximum performance. It stands to reason that this
is how you would like it to be stored as well if you needed to search for the data. But
now lets say that you decide to delete the middle file as its no longer any use to you.
You now have a gap inbetween your files.

Lets say this time you write a file of 15mb in size. This file will be written in the first
10Mb of space and the remaining 5Mb added to the backend of the free space.As
you can imagine with the millions of files being written to and deleted from the disk
each day, not to mention the temporary files that windows uses on a frequent basis
its not hard to imagine the state in which your hard disk can be in after months of
use. After a defrag in this simple example your PC would re-arrange the disk to look
as follows.

When files or indeed groups of files that belong together are stores next to each
other the PC has a much easier time locating the data plus the disk heads don’t have
to travel to different parts of the disk to retrieve the data required. This of course
speeds up the disks performance and so in turn increases overall system
performance. There are of course levels of performance gains. It becomes more
negligible as you move to faster hard disks with large memory buffers to compensate
for file fragmentation however I would not ignore the problem of fragmentation, it
doesn’t take much effort to defrag your disk now and then

How does defragging increase disk space?

Simply put defragging doesn’t really create any free space on your hard disk. It may
appear when you look at the graphics that defrag programs show you, that the disk
looks like it has more space, but all you are doing is moving data about not removing
any. Any disk space gain is negligible and is caused when the defrag program puts
together half clusters of data. Clusters can hold a number of files, but if not filled the
next file is started at the next cluster. If a file is broken into pieces around the disk
and defrag can put the file back into a single cluster, or just save a cluster
somewhere a small amount of space will be released.
Advanced Defragging

Some defragging software can go a little beyond just sorting your files so they are all
together. Programs such as Norton Speed Disk can also sort your entire sets of files
and programs into the order that they are used. For example it can be set so that
your windows swap file is at the fastest part of the disk, followed by games and most
used applications which also need the fastest part of the hard disk., Then documents
etc and rarely used application can be put to the back of the disk., This gives the
priority speed access to the applications that need it most. Again this may only be a
small increase in performance but every little helps.

Software to use for Defragging

You will be pleased to know that Windows comes with an adequate defrag program
which everyone can use. There are also some other pieces of software out there for
a more specific use. Norton Speed disk is one option on the market which comes as
part of Norton Utilities and Norton Systemworks. Doing a search on Defrag software
on your favourite search engine will give you some options of free to use and pay for
software.