How to defragment a disk on Windows 8. Optimizing the disk structure on the latest versions of Windows

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In this article, I will try to explain what defragmentation is and how to defragment a disk in the Windows 8 or 8.1 operating system.

A hard drive is made up of sectors, and when you write data to it, those sectors are filled in order. But if you often install and uninstall programs, then over time the files on HDD will be written to free sectors, which can be located in different parts hard drive. In other words, fragments of one file can be in different places - this is fragmentation.

Defragmentation is necessary in order to arrange fragments of one file in the desired sequence. You can do it using the built-in Windows defragmenter, and using third-party software.

I also note that if your computer has a solid-state SSD drive, then defragmentation will not affect the speed of the computer in any way, and will simply be useless, because the information on the SSD disk is written to flash memory, there are no magnetic disks or read heads.

So how do defragment a disk in Windows 8. To do this, press the key combination Win+W and write in the search bar "defragmentation". Options will appear on the left, select “Defragmentation and optimization of your disks”.

You can open this window in another way. Press the combination Win + E, the “Computer” window will open. Here, select any drive and go to the “Management” tab. Then click on the button "Optimize".

Before defragmenting, highlight required section disk and press "Analyze". After this, in the section "Current state" The percentage of disk fragmentation will be displayed. If this value exceeds 10%, then defragmentation can be performed.

To do this, click on the button "Optimize". The process can take from 20 minutes to several hours.

In Windows 7, 8, 8.1 and 10 operating systems, you can configure defragmentation to run on a schedule. To do this, click "Change settings".

In the next window, you can select how often defragmentation will be performed: daily (it’s better not to select), weekly (if you install and uninstall various programs), monthly (most best option). By unchecking the item "Run as scheduled", You will disable the launch of automatic defragmentation (useful if you have an SSD). To mark which drives you want to defragment, click Select.

In the next window, check the boxes next to the drives that need to be optimized and click OK.

Save your settings and close all windows.

You can also defragment your disk using third party programs. For example, the free program Auslogics Disk Defrag. The program is easy to use and has all the necessary functions. By clicking on the link, you can download the program, read about its installation and detailed description about its use.

Hard disk defragmentation process Windows disk 8 is almost no different from disk optimization on Windows 10. By following the link, you can read the article: Windows 10 disk defragmentation. Considering this fact, watch the video on the topic:

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Defragmentation is necessary for the disk from time to time in order to maintain the performance of the drive itself and the system as a whole. This procedure collects all clusters belonging to the same file together. And thus all information on the hard drive will be stored in an orderly and structured manner. Many users defragment in the hope that the quality of their computer will improve. And yes, it really helps.

The system developers have provided special software, which you can use for optimization. Eight automatically calls this software once a week, so you don't have to worry about this problem often. But if you still decide to defragment manually, then we will consider several ways to do this.

Method 1: Auslogics Disk Defrag

One of best programs considered to defragment disks. This software performs the optimization procedure much faster and better than standard Windows tools. Using Auslogic Disk Defrag will help you not only optimize the arrangement of information in clusters as much as possible, but will also prevent file fragmentation in the future. Special attention this software pays system files- during defragmentation, their location is optimized and they are transferred to a faster part of the disk.

Launch the program and you will see a list of drives available for optimization. Click on the required drive and start defragmentation by clicking on the corresponding button.

Interesting!
Before optimizing the disk, it is recommended that you also perform an analysis of the disk. To do this, select the appropriate item from the drop-down menu.

Method 2: Wise Disk Cleaner

Another equally popular one free program, which allows you to quickly find and delete unused files and improve the state of the system, as well as defragment the contents of the disk. Before starting work, you will create backup copy all files so that if important data is deleted, you can roll back.

In order to optimize, select the appropriate item in the panel at the top. You will see drives that can be optimized. Tick the required boxes and click on the button. "Defragmentation".

Method 3: Piriform Defraggler

The free software is a product of the same company that developed the well-known . Defragler has several advantages over standard utility Windows defragmentation. Firstly, the whole procedure is much faster and better. And secondly, here you can optimize not only hard drive partitions, but also some individual files.

The program is very easy to use: just click on the drive you want to optimize and click the button "Defragmentation" at the bottom of the window.

Method 4: Standard system tools

Thus, all the methods discussed above will help you increase the speed of the system, as well as the reading and writing speed of the hard drive. We hope this information was useful to you and you will not have any problems performing defragmentation.

It is difficult to find a person who has worked in Windows for a long time who has never heard of disk defragmentation and did not carry it out in the hope of speeding up the system. There are many myths floating around this topic; unfortunately, not everyone clearly understands what processes are behind this phenomenon. Now we will try to figure it out, why disk defragmentation is needed.

As you know, data is stored on a hard drive in so-called clusters - logical cells. When writing a file, data is written to the cluster sequentially.

Now imagine this situation: we wrote a file to disk that took 10 clusters in a row. Following it, another file was written into 5 clusters. Then, after a while, we decided to add some data to the first file, for another five clusters. In this case, the clusters belonging to the first file will be separated, since it will only be possible to write to the nearest free place disk. An even worse picture arises when a large number of files are deleted, and a larger one is written in their place, which can be divided into fragments already at the stage of initial recording.

This is what a fragment of a disc with recorded data will look like.

Such “fragments” with files that are frequently updated can form in the thousands, and they will most likely be separated over much longer distances than neighboring clusters. In order to read this file, the disk read heads need to sequentially visit all areas and read all fragments. In this case, the speed of working with a highly fragmented file can significantly decrease.

To combat this undesirable phenomenon, a defragmentation procedure was created, during which clusters belonging to the same file are combined into sequential chains.

Fortunately, users of modern Windows versions There is no need to pay attention to performing this procedure regularly. Defragmentation in the Windows 8.1 operating system is configured automatically, by default once a week.

This does not apply to solid-state SSD drives, since defragmentation of this type of drive causes premature “aging” of the memory chips. In this case, Windows detects the type of disk and excludes it from the defragmentation task scheduler.

The situation is similar with USB Flash drives, defragmentation is mostly harmful for them, since they are technologically built on a similar type of memory, which has limited quantity recording cycles.

However, the user can decide to defragment the disk manually at any time. To do this, you need to open the properties of the logical drive for which you want to defragment, go to the “Tools” tab and click the “Optimize” button.

The “Disk Optimization” window opens, in which you can find out the current degree of fragmentation using the “Analyze” button, as well as perform forced defragmentation by clicking the “Optimize” button accordingly.

The article would be incomplete without mentioning third-party disk defragmentation programs, the functionality of which may differ slightly. The most popular of them (but the list does not end there) are Piriform Defraggler And Auslogics Disk Defrag. The programs are free and work great on modern versions Windows operating systems, including Windows 8.1.

The main functionality of the programs is similar - they reorganize clusters on the disk in such a way that the data belonging to certain files, were arranged sequentially and inextricably. But there are also some additional functions, which distinguish them favorably from the built-in tool Windows defragmentation 8.1.

This, for example, is a more advanced scheduler that allows you to turn off the computer upon completion of the defragmentation procedure, as well as optimal defragmentation methods that place clusters of system and most popular files (swap file and others) closer to the beginning of the disk, where more technologically high speed read-write.

Summarizing all of the above, I would like to once again clarify that defragmentation is not a cure for all ills and will help speed up the computer only if the “bottleneck” is precisely the slow reading of fragmented files, which occurs very rarely.

With modern hardware, you can ignore even a 50% degree of fragmentation and continue to work without any problems. If, even after defragmentation, the performance problem is still acute, most likely, you will need to perform a comprehensive diagnosis and assessment of all critical systems in order to find the weakest point.

Defragmentation is an important procedure that needs to be performed regularly on your computer. You can do disk defragmentation using the usual using Windows, or maybe special programs. We will do defragmentation by means operating system Windows 8.

Why is defragmentation needed?

When installed on the hard drive new program, game, or any information is recorded, then part of this data is written to different areas of the hard drive. And it may happen that parts of the files will be located far from each other. This is called fragmentation. Over time, there are a lot of such scattered parts and the computer begins to work slower and slower (in common parlance, slow down).

To reduce fragmentation, you need to defragment (assemble pieces of the program one after another or side by side).

The defragmentation process can last from several minutes to several hours. It depends on the size of the hard drive, the performance of the computer and the degree of fragmentation.

Be sure to periodically defragment. Severe fragmentation of files on the hard drive is main reason because of which the computer starts to slow down.

How to defragment using Windows 8

Open the folder This computer. You will see everything in it sections of hard disk. Choose Local drive C.

Click on the icon Local disk WITH right click mouse and select the section in the menu that appears Properties.

In the window that appears, go to the tab Service.

Finding the section Disk optimization and defragmentation and press the button Optimize.

A new window will appear with all sections. Select the desired section and press the button Analyze to find out the degree of fragmentation of our disks.

If the degree of fragmentation is small, then defragmentation is not required. On disks with large fragmentation, you need to click the button Optimize.