What is Fragmentation Defragmentation Fragmentation occurs on a hard drive, a memory module, or other media when data is not written closely enough physically on the drive. Those fragmented, individual pieces of data are referred to generally as fragments. Defragmentation, then, is the process of un fragmenting or piecing together, those fragmented files so they sit closer physically on the drive or other media, potentially speeding up the drives ability to access the file. Best Program For Defragmentation' title='Best Program For Defragmentation' />What Are File Fragments Fragments, like I mentioned above, are simply pieces of files that arent placed next to each other on the drive. That might be kind of strange to think about, and nothing you would ever notice, but its true. For example, when you create a new Microsoft Word file, you see the whole file in one place, like on the Desktop or in your Documents folder. You can open it, edit it, remove it, rename it whatever you want. From your perspective, this is all happening in one place, but in reality, at least physically on the drive, this is often not the case. Instead, your hard drive is probably saving portions of the file in one area of the storage device while the rest of it exists somewhere else on the device, potentially far away. When you open the file, your hard drive quickly pulls together all the pieces of the file so it can be used by the rest of your computer system. When a drive has to read pieces of data from multiple different areas on the drive, it can not access the whole of the data as fast as it could if it had all been written together in the same area of the drive. Fragmentation An Analogy. As an analogy, imagine that you want to play a card game that requires an entire deck of cards. Before you can play the game, you have to retrieve the deck from wherever it might be. If the cards are spread all over a room, the time needed to gather them together and put them in order would be much greater than if they were sitting on the table, nicely organized. A deck of cards spread all over a room can be thought of as a fragmented deck of cards, much like the fragmented data on a hard drive that, when gathered together defragmented, might equal a file you want to open or a process from a particular software program that needs to run. Why Does Fragmentation Take Place Fragments happen when the file system allows gaps to develop between the different pieces of a file. If you know anything about file systems in general, you may have already guessed that the file system was the culprit in this fragmentation business, but why Sometimes fragmentation happens because the file system reserved too much space for the file when it was first created, and therefore left open areas around it. When you install Auslogics Disk Defrag, be sure to deselect the optional Ask toolbar and homepage. When you launch the program for the first time, it will. System Mechanic Professional from iolo Technologies is my first choice for best PC Repair in 2017. Iolo has gone even further to make PC Tuneup more comprehensive. In our 2015 review of the top free disk defragmenter, we found 5 we could recommend with the best of these as good as any commercial product. IFileRecovery is a free deleted file recovery program designed for recover deleted files and folders from hard drives or other devices on Windows. Best Program For Defragmentation' title='Best Program For Defragmentation' />Previously deleted files are also another reason the file system fragments data when written. When a file is removed, its previously occupied space is now open for new files to be saved to it. As you can imagine, if that now open space isnt large enough to support the whole size of the new file, then only a part of it can be saved there. The rest must be positioned somewhere else, hopefully, nearby but not always. Having some pieces of a file in one place while the others are located elsewhere is going to require the hard drive to look through the gaps or spaces occupied by other files until it can gather all the necessary pieces to bring the file together for you. Best Program For Defragmentation' title='Best Program For Defragmentation' />Get complete file protection and instant file recovery with Undelete Server for business use. Undelete also include 10 desktop client licenses so user can undelete. What is Defragmentation Defragmentation, also known as defrag or defragging is the process of reorganizing the data stored on the hard drive so that. This method of storing data is completely normal and likely wont ever change. Animated Gif Open Source Software there. The alternative would be for the file system to constantly reshuffle all existing data on the drive each and every time a file is changed, which would bring the data writing process to a crawl, slowing down everything else with it. So, while its frustrating that fragmentation exists, which slows the computer down a little bit, I think about it a necessary evil in a sense this small problem instead of a much larger one. Defragmentation to the Rescue As you know from all the discussion thus far, files on a storage device can be accessed much faster, at least on a traditional hard drive, when the pieces that make them up are close together. O-O-Defrag-Professional-Edition.png' alt='Best Program For Defragmentation' title='Best Program For Defragmentation' />Over time, as more and more fragmentation occurs, there can be a measurable, even noticeable, slowdown. You might experience it as general computer sluggishness but, assuming excessive fragmentation has occurred, much of that slowness may be due to the time it takes your hard drive to access file after file, each in any number of different physical places on the drive. So, on occasion, defragmentation, or the act of reversing fragmentation i. This is usually just referred to as defragging. The defragging process isnt something you do manually. Like I mentioned above, your experience with your files is consistent, so theres no rearranging needed on your end. Best Program For Defragmentation' title='Best Program For Defragmentation' />Fragmentation isnt just a disorganized collection of files and folders. A dedicated defragging tool is what you need. Disk Defragmenter is one such defragger and is included for free in the Windows operating system. That said, there are many third party options as well, the better of which do a considerably better job at the defragmentation process than Microsofts built in tool. See my List of Free Defrag Software for full, updated reviews of the best ones out there. Defraggler is hands down my favorite one. Defragging is pretty straightforward and all of those tools have similar interfaces. For the most part, you simply select the drive you want to defrag and tap or click the Defragment or Defrag button. The time it takes to defrag a drive depends mostly on the size of the drive and the level of fragmentation but expect most modern computers and large hard drives to take an hour or more to fully defrag. Should I Defrag My Solid State Hard Drive No, you really should not defrag a solid state hard drive SSD. For the most part, defragging an SSD is a wholesale waste of time. Not only that, defragging an SDD will shorten the overall lifespan of the drive. A solid state drive is a hard drive that has no moving parts. SSDs are basically overgrown versions of the storage used on flash drives and digital cameras. As you may have already guessed, if a drive doesnt have moving parts, and so nothing to take up time as it moves around gathering all of a files fragments together, then all the fragments of a file can essentially be accessed at the same time. All that said yes, fragmentation does occur on solid state drives because the file system is mostly to blame. However, because performance isnt impacted nearly as much as it is on non SSDs, you really dont need to ever defrag them. Another reason you dont need to defrag solid state drives is because you shouldnt defrag them Doing so will cause them to fail more quickly than they would otherwise. Heres why SSDs allow a finite number of writes i. Each and every time a defrag is run on a hard drive, it has to move the files from location to another, each time writing the file to a new location. This means the SSD would endure constant writing, over and over again, as the defrag process progresses. More writing more wear and tear earlier death. So, without a doubt, dont defrag your SSD. Not only is it unhelpful, its also ultimately damaging. Many defragmenter tools actually wont even give you the option to defrag SSDs, or, if they do, theyll prompt you with a warning that says its not recommended. Just to be clear do defrag your regular, old fashioned, spinning hard drives. More on Defragmentation.