How to Do Defragmentation in Windows 10

Defragmenting your hard drive will make it faster by optimizing the sectors and by applying similar fixes if there are some fragmented sectors. So it is recommended to do defragmentation every once in a while in order to make sure that your hard drive performs at its best. In this article, we are going to take a look at the steps required to defragment your hard drive. So grab your mouse and be ready to speed up your computer if you have been using it for years and never looked at this defragmenting feature ever.

Keep in mind that, you can only defragment the traditional hard drives (HDD). If you are using an SSD, you should perform the optimization instead which will be available on the same screen following the same steps mentioned below.

Steps to Defragment your Hard Drive in Windows 10

1. Go to This PC from your desktop. If the desktop icon is not available, you can also search in the search box near the menu bar.
2. Right-click on any drive that you want to perform defragmentation on. It doesn’t matter as the defrag screen will list all the partitions on your hard drive.
3. Click on Properties from the right-click menu.
4. Navigate to the Tools tab.
5. Then click on the Optimize button.
6. It will open the defragmentation screen where you can defrag and optimize your hard drives.
7. Now, choose any hard drive and click on the Analyze button. This may vary based on the version of Windows you are using.
8. The process will first check for the percentage of the fragmented sectors and display it next to the drive.
9. After the initial step has been completed, you can click on the Optimize button to start defragmenting the hard drive partition.
10. As soon as the process is completed, it will show as the disk is 0% fragmented now.

Please note that it might take a while based on the size of your hard drive, the files, the amount of fragmented sectors, etc. So, be patient while the process is running. Also, it is not recommended to turn off the computer while the defragmentation is running.

That’s it. you have successfully optimized your hard drive. As previously mentioned, if you are using an SSD, you will not be able to defrag it. Because HDDs and SSDs work in different ways, you will not have anything to defrag. Instead, Windows provides an optimize option for SSDs. So, you can select any of the SSD partitions and click on the Optimize button in order to perform the optimization.