However, defragmentation is no longer necessary on Windows 10 and even less so on Windows 8.1 and 8.0. If you’re using Windows 10, you can skip this step and enjoy the performance benefits of the new operating system. If you’re using Windows 8.1 or 8.0, defragmentation is still a good idea to perform every few months or even annually to keep your hard drive healthy and performing at its best.

Windows comes with a built-in defragment tool that does a decent job of organizing your computer’s files. However, over time many companies started selling third party defragging tools that supposedly did the job faster, better and more accurately. Some were actually fairly good, but most pretty much did the same thing as the built-in Windows defragment tool or even worse. It wasn’t surprising to run a third-party defrag tool and have your computer actually run slower than before. ..

Third Party Defrag Scenarios

Third-party defragmenting tools can be helpful for people with complex setups who have different types of data stored on different drives, but they’re not always necessary. ..

If you have a lot of small files that are accessed often, you could use a third-party tool to defragment your drive so that the files are sorted by the last accessed time or creation time. For a drive that has a bunch of large music or video files that don’t get accessed very often, you could sort them on the disk by folder size or file size.

You could selectively defragment files or folders on a drive, depending on the needs of the individual. This would be useful for specific scenarios where time and effort are not necessary to achieve desired results.

A third-party defrag tool can help speed up a computer by moving all the data to the beginning of a disk. This can free up some extra space on the hard drive and help speed up the PC.

Windows Built-In Defrag Is The Best

For the 1% of users who experience problems with their disk defragmenter, there are a few things that can be done to troubleshoot and fix the issue. ..

Windows 7 and above don’t speed up read or write access to data on the hard drive by any noticeable amount, according to a bunch of people who have tried them.

This is because hard drives nowadays are much larger and therefore have more free space. With the extra space, Windows can keep your files organized and less fragmented.

Modern computers and hard drives can access data much faster than earlier. So even if you have a partially fragmented hard drive, it most likely won’t even make any difference in how fast the data can be accessed. Only if you have a very fragmented hard drive will you start seeing some slowdowns, but this is virtually impossible because of the built-in Windows defragmenter.

In Windows 7, Disk Defragmenter was called “Disk Optimize” and in Windows 8 and higher it’s now called “Optimize Drives.” By default, it’s scheduled to run once a week, which pretty much keeps all your drives near 0% fragmentation. Here’s my Windows 7 PC after 2 years of use without ever manually running a defrag.

Optimize Drives and Disk Defragmenter in Windows 8 and Windows 7 can help improve your computer’s performance by optimizing your disk space and defragmenting your hard drive. This can help reduce the amount of data you need to download and store on your computer, as well as the time it takes to load new applications.

SSDs Don’t Need Defragmenting

Windows 10’s automatic disk defragmentation feature is slowly dying because SSDs are better.

An SSD is a great choice for anyone looking to improve their reading and writing performance. Even the cheapest and slowest SSDs are many times faster than traditional spinning hard drives.

I switched to an SSD for my Windows 7 machine because it was the only way to save time booting up my machine.

Conclusion

Windows XP on an older machine should be upgraded to Windows Vista or higher. If you can’t upgrade, then manually run the built-in disk defragmenter.

If you’re a tech geek and want to speed up your PC, then install a reputable third-party defrag tool and configure it to your liking. Otherwise, relax and enjoy your already optimized hard drive. Another good way to speed up a PC is by uninstalling unused or junk software. Enjoy!