Defragmenting your computer
Defragmenting your hard drive can be good or bad for the device depending on what kind of hard drive you’re using. Generally, you want to regularly defragment a mechanical Hard Disk Drive and avoid defragmenting a Solid State Disk Drive.
Defragmentation can improve data access performance for HDDs that store information on disk platters, whereas it can cause SSDs that use flash memory to wear out faster.
Fragmentation will happen, as your hard disk drive fills up, or as files are deleted and modified, the file sytem stores a file blocks in multiple locations.
This means your hard disk drive will have to do more work for reading, opening and saving files. This cause your PC to slow down and even shorten the life of yout hard drive.
Defragmenting, or defragging, your hard disk drive on a regular basis will increase the overall health and speed of your computer system.
The benefits of defragging your hard disk drive are:
- Faster Applications
Programs run faster and more efficiently when the data is grouped together easier access - Extended Hard Drive Life
The mechanical parts of the drive have to travel less distance when the data is all in one place, thereby reducing wear and tear on the drive itself. - More Efficient Security
When an anti-virus program scans your hard drive, it takes less time when your drive is less fragmented. - Reduced Errors
The process of defragmentation can often point out bad sectors that cloud potentially cause damage if your data was saved in this area.
