When you accidentally delete a file, have a drive crash, or are hit by a virus, fragmented files are much less likely to succeed. One thing of note about defragmentation is that by putting files in consecutive allocation units, data-recovery becomes easier and more likely to succeed. On SSDs, this has no performance benefit. On spinning media like hard-drives, this provides faster access to the data since the platter does not have to spin more and the heads do not have to thrash back and forth. The outside spins faster, so the harddrive will perform better when writing/reading near the outside of these platters because more data will be passing under the read/write head for a given time period.Īlso, I'd like to add something about defragging SSD's:Īs others have mentioned, it ensures that files are stored in contiguously numbered allocation units. Optimize the location on the harddrive (spinning harddrives only.) Hard drives are composed of spinning disk-shaped platters.If a file is continuously stored, then it can be read faster.

At first they will be stored continuously, but gaps/incontinuities will be created when files are deleted/modified. Most files are split into smaller 'fragments' that are stuck wherever there is space. Ensures all the pieces of a file are located in a continuous part of the hard drive.

Defrag 6