The term ‘defragging’ is actually a technical jargon that refers to the “Disk Defragmenter” option available in Windows Operating System. The basic purpose of defragging is to speed up the performance of your computer by arranging files and folders as stored on your hard drive in the most appropriate manner.

Defragging also helps in making the best possible utilization of storage space as might be available on your hard drive. To be able to defrag, you will have to click on Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter. You can also right click on “My Computer” and select ‘Manage’, to get to the Disk Defragmenter option.

To understand how defragging actually works, you first need to have a look at the file allocation system as used by Windows. What Windows does is that it formats your hard drive into thousands of small data clusters that are usually 512 bytes or characters. All your files and folders are stored in these data clusters, but since Windows randomly selects the actual storage point, your hard drive ends up with files and folders that are haphazardly stored all over the place.

Just try imagining reading a book whose pages are strewn all over your home and you will know how difficult it actually is for Windows to read from an un-fragmented hard drive. Defragging in turn would represent your efforts to pick up individual pieces of the book and arrange them in a proper sequence according to the page numbers.

Defragging is something that you need to do from time to time, at least once every quarter. You can do it more frequently if you want, but since doing so every other day will not make much of a difference to your computer’s performance, I would never recommend this. Moreover, since defragging can take several hours depending on the amount of data in your hard drive, I would recommend that you start the Defragmentation process at night. Leave it overnight and when you wake up you will find a computer that’s much faster and smarter.