Software

How to Fight Disk Fragmentation

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  • January 4, 2010

No matter how fast computers are at first, they usually become a lot slower just after a couple of months of use. There are several reasons why that happens, but the most common one is hard drives that need to be defragmented.

Moving parts make hard disks the slowest part of a computer. As you create documents, spend time on the Internet and download stuff, files become scattered all over the hard drive and the drive becomes fragmented. That makes file access speed fall, because the reading head has to do a lot more work. Badly fragmented disks can even lead to computer freeze-ups and crashes. The answer is to defrag regularly.

Windows has its own built-in defrag utility, which you can access by clicking on the Start button, then going to Programs and then to Accessories. However, it’s very slow and often doesn’t do the job properly. But don’t worry, there are a lot of free alternatives. One of them is Auslogics Disk Defrag – a well-known and highly recommended defrag and disk optimization tool. It’s a lot faster than the Windows defragmentation utility, does a very good job, and has sleek Windows 7-style user interface.

Auslogics Disk Defrag 3 (beta)

Let’s have a look at some of its features:

1. Free Space Defragmentation

Simple defragmentation only defrags files and not free disk space. This means that free space is scattered all over the disk. When new files are created, Windows fills in those small free space fragments – that’s how new files become fragmented. Auslogics Disk Defrag keeps the free space defragmented, which prevents file fragmentation in the future.

free space holes

2. System Files Smart Placement

Quite often Windows system files get placed pretty much anywhere on the disk and end up mixed with other files. As a result Windows needs more time to access them. Auslogics Disk Defrag arranges system files by defragmenting and moving them to the faster part of the disk and helps your system run smoother.

3. List of Fragmented Files

Auslogics Disk Defrag generates a list of all fragmented files after performing disk analysis. Selecting any file from the list will highlight its clusters’ location on the fragmentation map. Selected files can be easily defragmented or added to the ignore list.

4. Command Line Option

The command line feature is very handy for tech-savvy users and if you need to defragment several computers. It allows you to defrag multiple disks, specify how much CPU should be used for defragmentation, and generate detailed HTML logs. A comprehensive list of error codes is provided, so that system administrators can use the program in their automation scripts.

Auslogics Disk Defrag is very easy to use, so that even novice users will be comfortable with it. If you run its defrag option once a week and its optimization option once every other week, you can be sure that your hard drives are well looked after and stay in top form.

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