Defragmentation of individual folders. How to defragment a disk. When should you defragment your drive?

This is a process during which the location of files on the disk is optimized. This optimization allows you to increase the speed of working with files, and therefore improve the performance of your computer as a whole. In this material we will talk about how to defragment a disk using the tools built into Windows, as well as using third-party programs.

Tips for performing defragmentation:

• Do not defragment drives. For SSD drives, defragmentation is absolutely useless. It only reduces the service life of the SSD drive, but does not provide any gain in operating speed.
• To perform defragmentation, you need free disk space. The more free space, the faster and better the disk defragmentation will be performed. The minimum amount of available space is considered to be 15 percent of the entire disk.
• If you want to get consistently high speed, then use scheduled defragmentation.
• Avoid using a drive that is being defragmented.

How to defragment a disk using Windows

The Windows operating system has a built-in mechanism for defragmenting disks. To use it, open “My Computer” and call the properties of the partition that you want to fragment.

In the window that opens, go to the “Services” tab and click on the “Run defragmentation” button.

After this, the “Disk Defragmenter” window will open in front of you. Here you need to select the disk that you want to fragment and click on the “Analyze disk” button.

After the analysis of the selected disk is completed, you will see the percentage of fragmented data on the disk. If this percentage is significant, then you need to defragment. For example, I analyzed the “E” drive and the percentage of fragmented data on it is zero. There is no need to defragment this disk. But after analyzing the “C” drive, it turned out that it was fragmented by 36 percent, which means it needs to be defragmented.

In order to defragment the “C” drive, select it in the list of drives and click on the “Disk Defragmentation” button.

After this, the defragmentation process will begin. The time it takes to defragment a disk depends on the amount of data defragmented and the speed of the disk itself. As a rule, this takes at least several hours.

In addition to manually starting defragmentation, you can use scheduled startup. To do this, in the “Disk Defragmentation” window, click on the “Enable Schedule” button.

After this, a small window “Disk defragmentation: change schedule” will appear in front of you. Here you need to enable the “Run on schedule” function and configure the schedule.

Defragmentation can be performed daily, weekly, or monthly. After setting the schedule, close all windows by clicking on the “OK” button.

Disk defragmentation using third-party programs

You can also defragment the disk using third-party programs. Now there are many quality ones. The most popular free ones are Piriform Defragger, Auslogics Disk Defrag, MyDefrag, IObit Smart Defrag. There are many more paid programs, the most famous of them are: O&O Defrag, Ashampoo Magical Defrag, Raxco PerfectDisk, Auslogics Disk Defrag Professional.

For example, let's look at the process of defragmenting a disk using the free program Auslogics Disk Defrag Free.

After starting the program, check the boxes next to the disks that you want to defragment and start analyzing them.

After analysis, the program showed that drive “C” was 46 percent fragmented. In order to defragment this disk, check the box and click on the “Defrag” button.

This is all that needs to be done, all that remains is to wait for the defragmentation process to complete.

Like a built-in defragmentation utility, Auslogics Disk Defrag Free allows you to defragment disks on a schedule. To do this, open the “Settings” menu and select “Scheduler”.

After this, a window with a defragmentation schedule will open. Here you need to enable the “Defragment automaticaly” function, select the defragmentation time and disks.

After this, Auslogics Disk Defrag Free will defragment automatically at the specified time.

Devices for recording information need so-called optimization. First of all, this concerns the computer's hard drive, which can contain a huge amount of content. In Windows xp, the hard drive optimization procedure is based on 3 pillars: enabling dma mode, disk write caching and defragmentation.

If the first two parameters are already configured in the system by default, then the last of them always raises the question of how to defragment. Since it is this that requires periodic intervention from the user.

Process description

Before considering how to do defragmentation, we will describe the process of this procedure itself. Then we’ll look at the utilities built into xp and the auslogics software package, which also has a separate defragmenter application.

So, the above procedure has the following features. When the user launches it, it expects the result - speeding up the work with the computer and running everyday tasks.

On a hard drive, data is stored in small portions in sectors. A file or folder with files fits entirely within one sector. But over time, with the constant addition of new content to the HDD, these same objects shift relative to their original position in such a way that one part of a file or folder may be in the initial sector, and the remaining parts in other non-adjacent sectors. You end up with scattered pieces of content that take longer than usual to access.

Thus, in order to speed up reading data from disk and, therefore, reduce the time it takes to open an application or document, you need to combine these fragments. We will now look at how to do this using the example of a standard Windows xp utility - the defrag.exe program

This utility has and can be called through the working system management console - MMC. There are two ways to launch this console.

1. In the “start” menu, open the “run” item, then enter mmc into the working command window, but I recommend doing something more wisely.
2. Namely: right-click (touchpad) on the “computer” icon and select the “computer management” option.
3. The Windows management console will open, divided into two parts. In the one that is smaller and located to the left, we will finally see how to defragment.
4. Select the item “disk defragmentation” and click on it. A window will open in which you can perform this procedure on specific hard drive partitions.
5. Let's say we need to find out if there are additional fragments on the system partition WITH. Select the icon of this section by clicking the mouse and clicking “disk analysis”. The program will analyze the current state of the partition and display a detailed summary of whether defragmentation is needed for the selected volume.
6. If the disk needs processing, click the “defragmentation” button and wait for the result. After completing the procedure, the application will display a report on the work performed. If some files could not be optimized, there may not be enough free space on the partition. Then, before defragmenting, free up additional space and then try again.

We use it for optimizationauslogics 5

The above set of programs was created to optimize Windows. The auslogics series 5 also includes a defragmenter. Here's how to defragment with it (assuming that this complex is already installed):

1. Launch the application using a shortcut on the Windows desktop.
2. Click on the blue ball icon in the tray (near the clock).
3. Right-click to sequentially use the submenu list “Tools” - “disk maintenance/defragmentation”.
4. In the program window that opens, analyze or defragment partitions. The utility from auslogics has advanced capabilities when compared with the optimizer built into the system. Otherwise, its functionality is similar to the defrag.exe interface

Disk defragmentation allows you to optimize the file system, which has a positive effect on computer performance. Most Windows OS users prefer to defragment using a standard utility built into the operating system. However, the standard Windows defragmenter does not always cope with its task 100%, and then third-party programs, such as Auslogics Disk Defrag, come to the rescue.

Benefits of Auslogics Disk Defrag

Auslogics Disk Defrag utility is an excellent defragmentation tool and has several significant advantages.

• The program carries out a deep and thorough defragmentation of the logical structure of the file system and optimizes the operation of the hard drive.
• Auslogics Disk Defrag has a built-in scheduler, which allows the program to start and work automatically.
• The program can work with disks of any size without any restrictions.
• Auslogics Disk Defrag has the ability to selectively defragment individual folders or even files on your hard drive.
• In addition to defragmentation itself, Auslogics Disk Defrag can also optimize and consolidate free disk space.

Download and Install

Auslogics Disk Defrag is a completely free program, you can download it from the official website of the developer, which is located at: Auslogics.com

At the end of the program installation process, the installer will offer to install Hamster Free ZIP Archiver, so if you do not need an archiver, do not forget to uncheck the corresponding box.

Working with Disk Defrag

Auslogics Disk Defrag has an English-language interface, but since there are not so many functions in this utility, it will not be difficult to understand it. At the top of the program window there is a list of logical partitions on the computer indicating the size, free space and file system type. Having checked the required disks, you should select the desired action from the menu located just below: analysis, defragmentation, defragmentation and optimization, or quick defragmentation. You can also, if desired, check the box to turn off the computer after the defragmentation process is complete (this can be especially useful if you decide to defragment late at night).

This will be followed by completing the specified task. By the way, before defragmenting disks, it is always advisable to first carry out an analysis - the program will analyze the disk and create a map of the file system indicating the level of file fragmentation. Then you can decide whether it’s time to defragment or not yet. The defragmentation process itself looks like this:

Auslogics Disk Defrag Settings

To go to the settings of the Auslogics Disk Defrag program, you need to open the menu Settings and go to point Program settings.

General settings of the Auslogics Disk Defrag utility are located in the section General. Here you can specify whether the program is minimized to the system tray, whether to launch along with the operating system, and you can also add the Disk Defrag item to the Windows context menu.

Several more useful options can be found in the section Algorithms. Here you can configure automatic deletion of temporary files (delete temporary files before defragmenting), skip fragments larger than the specified size (skip fragments larger than), move system files to the beginning of the disk (move system files to the beginning of the disk) and defragmentation in VSS -compatible mode (defragment in VSS compatible mode).

Scheduled defragmentation

The Auslogics Disk Defrag program allows you to defragment not only manually, but also automatically, according to a schedule. To configure the automatic defragmenter schedule, go to the menu Settings and go to Sheduler.

Check the box Defragment automatically and select the time when defragmentation will run:

• When the computer is idle.
• Daily.
• Weekly.
• Monthly.

You should also specify which disk partitions should be defragmented on a schedule, whether to defragment when the laptop is running on battery power, and whether to create a report on the defragmentation performed.

Defragmentation of individual files and folders

If you want to defragment only some folders and files on the disk of your computer, then you need to go to the menu Action, go to section Advanced and select the desired action: Defrag file (defragment a file) or Defrag folder (defragment a folder). Then in the window that opens, specify the location of the folder or file and click OK.

Today, finding a good program, and a free one, to defragment a hard drive is not a problem. All of them cope with their task quite effectively. It would seem that more is needed. Just a little - the ability to defragment individual specific files.

To make it clear, defragmentation is the movement of fragments of information scattered throughout the drive to neighboring areas. The benefits from it are undoubted. The read-write head does not need to make large jumps, which increases performance and reduces overall wear and tear on the drive itself.

Now to the question of why defragmentation of individual specific files is needed. Let's consider this example. The user does not indulge in experimental installation and removal of programs. Doesn't do video or photo editing. His main working tool is Microsoft Word. Which he uses one hundred percent. Every day creating dozens of new files, editing and copying existing ones, and so on.

As a result, the bulk of the new fragments will be occupied by Microsoft Word files. So why defragment the entire hard drive if you can limit yourself to office files.

How to defragment individual files.

To defragment individual files, there is also a free Contig utility. can be found on the manufacturer's website.

Unzip the utility. Since it does not have a graphical interface, but works from the command line, place a copy of the utility in a convenient location. In my opinion, the most convenient directory would be C:\Users\username. Why this one? Because when you start the command line, this parameter is specified automatically. All you have to do is add your parameters, this time for the Contig utility.

The basic syntax of the utility is: contig [-v] [-a] [-q] [-s] [filename].

Options:

• parameter [–v] displays information about file defragmentation operations performed by the utility
• parameter [-a] fragmentation analysis
• parameter [-q] switches the utility to hidden mode, only summary information is displayed
• parameter [-s] recursive processing of subdirectories.

Now let's set up a utility to defragment office files located in the "My Documents" directory. That is, all files with the .docx extension located in the folder will be defragmented.

contig -s C:\Users\username\Docunents\*.docx.

Another option for the utility is to create a new file that has already been defragmented during the creation process.

The syntax for creating such a file is: contig [-v] [-n filename length].

In this case, the utility for defragmenting individual files will itself find free space on the media and optimize the file in adjacent areas.