Defragmentation minimizes the amount of the fragmented on a hard drive. It identifies connected data files and put them in the same corporal location. Such as if you have installed data in your hard drive in the form of programs, documents, videos, etc., then the data is separated into multiple shreds of data that are stored on your hard drive. After a while, all of your shreds of data will spread out and mixed in with other data files.
When you perform defragmentation, defrag will reassemble all of the related chunks of data that are broken up and put them back in the same physical location. So it’s going to put all the data files related to certain programs together; all the files are related to specific videos together and the same with documents and images so on. This entire process is called defragmentation. From the below-given pictures, you can get an idea about defragmentation and also get an idea about how to defrag Windows 10.
How to Defrag Windows 10
Windows is an operating system launched by Microsoft Corporation. There are a lot of operating systems present in the market, but without having any argument, Windows is the highest selling and diversly used operating system. Approximately 90 percent of computers run any of the versions of Windows.
Back in 1985, the blueprint of the Windows operating system was designed. In 1995 The Windows95 released with integrated DOS and that offered inbuilt internet support adding the World Wide Web browser Internet Explorer. Few of the most popular Windows versions are
- Windows 98
- Windows XP
- Windows Vista
- Windows 7
- Windows 8
- Windows 10
Steps to defrag in windows 10
Over time passes, your hard disk gets fragmented, and your system becomes slow because it has to look for numerous places on your disk for those fragmented shreds and you might be looking to defrag windows 10. Use the built-in tool in Windows to defragment those files so that your run system more efficiently.
Windows 10 automatically defragments files for you by default, once in a week. Yet Windows 10 does not always run systematically, in case you are looking that your files are taking a long time to load check manually every month.
Solid-state drives work unlikely than conventional mechanical hard drives. Solid-state drives don’t need to be defragmented, and if you do so, it can pull down the performance time of your drive. If you have enabled System Restore, Windows defragment Solid-state devices once in a month. This is not a matter of concern because automatic defragmentation increases your drive performance and life.
To perform general optimization of the drive and send the TRIM command to optimize performance, you can use the optimize drive tool.
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Steps to perform defragmentation in Windows 10
Step one
Go to the Start menu of your PC and search Defrag into the search bar, and then choose Defragment and Optimize Drives from the search results.
If you are not getting the proper search result, you can opt for a different option, and that is,
by going to the control panel, you can reach to the tool and select System and Security and then select Defragment and Optimize Drives under administrative tools header.
By pressing the windows button, you can find the Control panel, and in the search bar type, click on the control panel and then selects the result or open the start menu, scroll down to the Windows System folder, then open the folder and select the control panel from it.
Step two
Look for the hard drive you want to defrag. Research for the list of your computer’s driver in defrag tool.
Step three
Examine the “Media Type” attribute for your drive and make sure it is not a Solid-state drive.
For a hard drive only move forward with defragmentation.
Step Four
The drive you want to defrag click on that and then press the “optimize” button below the list of drives.
Windows drives may ask you for approval before you move forward.
Step five
Wait for a while and let the Defrag tool work. Completion time will depend on the size of the drive and the level of fragmentation.
Step six
If you want Windows10 to defrag your drive on a regular interval, you can turn on scheduled optimization inside the defrag tool. Press the “Turn on” key under “Scheduled optimization,” then pick the schedule you want your windows to follow, and press the “choose” button to pick which drives should be inserted in the regular defrags.
Why should you defragment your hard drive
You have to choose a time when your system is on, but you are not using it. To perform defragmentation often you need to free up disk space, that means you have to save files to an external drive. Yet computer experts will not insist you do this if it is not needed. To speed up your system’s performance defragmenting your hard drive is very essential.
Suitable time to defragment your derive
The world is divided by opinions about executing defragmentation programs on your system.
The key factor against running defragmenters are:
- The work a hard drive needs to do during defragmentation that reduces the lifespan of the hard drive, in case you are performing defragmentation too often.
- Files can be corrupted during the defrag process, though the probability of this is very low.
- Performance gains to be observed if you defrag your hard drive more often.
Neutral opinions
It is established that you need to perform defragmentation for your drive, and it’s also true that doing defragmentation too often reduces the lifespan of the hard disk. There are a few points you need to keep in mind before performing defragmentation:
- Try to use an unused defragmenter, like Autulogics disk defrag, instead of using the internal windows utility. That works much faster and more efficiently, reducing the time that your hard drive is working at maximum power.
- How many times you defragment per year, let the level of computer usage to decide that. You will need to defragment more if you spend a lot of time online if you use heavy programs and run a database server.
- You may need to defrag if you have added more than one program recently.
- Try to follow proper defrag steps-First of all, clean all the unused files, execute drive cleanup, and Scan the drive, keep system backup and then execute your defragmenter.
- If your system is becoming inert, then you definitely need to perform defragmentation.
It is accepted that defragmentation is irritating- but the way computers are installed defrag is the job that will not be vanished in the near future. To ensure that defrag is running safely, smoothly, a lot of techniques and tools are available.
For Windows SQL server you can also perform defragmentation
Non-clingingly storing data on the drive is known as fragmentation. In the case of SQL Server, there are two types of fragmentation.
- Internal Fragmentation
Storing records non-clingingly inside the page is called internal frag. If there is any unutilized space between records in a page, then internal frag may occur. Internal frag appears through INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE statements or data modifications that are formed against the table. The congestion of each page can vary over time because the modifications are not uniformly distributed among the tuples of the table and indexes. Unused space creates faulty cache utilization and I/O, that drives to sluggish query performance.
There are two types of SQL language:
- Data definition language
- CREATE: Using this command, you can build a new table.
- ALTER: Data inside a table can be modified using ALTER statement.
- DROP: You can delete a table using the DROP statement.
- Data manipulation language
- SELECT: It is the most basic SQL statement that is used to select any data.
- INSERT: Using this INSERT statement, you can insert data into a table
- DELETE: Using this statement, you can delete data from your table.
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- External Fragmentation
While the extent of a table is not physically amassed clingingly on the drive, shifting from one to another extent creates higher drive rotation, this is called external frag.
How to fix defragmentation
Before you decide the defragmentation approach, it is necessary to find out the degree of fragmentation. You can use the sys.dm_db_physical_stats data management function to explore fragmentation.
avg_page_space_used_in_prcent calculates the average percentage of the data storage space used on the page. This grade permits you to see the internal index fragmentation.
Avg_fragmentation_in_percent informs you about external index fragmentation. Clustered index tables indicate the percentage of out-of-order pages while the next physical page addressed in the index that is referenced with the next-page pointing to the current page.
Fragment_count shows the number of continuous data fragments in the index. Every fragment constructs the cluster of extents that are nearby each other.
How to avoid index fragmentation
- With random key values, don’t insert data.
- To make records longer don’t update it.
- Do no alter index key attributes.
- The features that can cause page splits, be aware of that.
- Complete index fill factors.
Studying this article, you will be able to get details about defragmentation and you’ll be able to defrag windows 10 hard disk in several operating systems. Yes, there is a contradiction or difference opinion in the fact whether to defrag your computer in a regular interval is good or bad. But defragmentation is necessary to fasten up the performance of your system but if do that more often that can definitely harm your drive.
