Disk Defragmenter rearranges fragmented data on your disks and drives so they can work more efficiently

 

The result will be more noticeable on older computers that have slower hard disks and less memory - on newer machines that run very quickly anyway, the improvement will not be so noticeable if at all

 

On later version of Windows this is automatically scheduled to run in the background when needed, but if you want to manually defragment your disk you can do it as follows:-

 

 

Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 - Click Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter

 

Windows 8 - Right mouse click on Start Menu button and choose Control Panel > System and Security > Administrative Tools > Defragment and Optimise Drives

 

Windows 10 - Click Start > All apps > Windows Administrative Tools > Defragment and Optimise Drives

 

Windows 11 - Click Start > All apps > Windows Tools > Defragment and Optimise Drives

 

N.B. If your computer has a SSD hard drive then they do not need to be defragmented and the option will be disabled

 

You will then see the screen below where you can click Analyze disk to see how fragmented it is, and if it highly fragmented you can click Defragment disk to start the defragmentation process