What’s the best disk defrag for hard drive optimization? In this post, you’ll learn about both Windows built-in defraggler and the most powerful third-party disk defrag utility.
Before proceeding with disk defrag, we should first learn about disk fragment. Generally, a file is stored on a hard disk in the form of different contiguous segments so they can be read by the header with ease. Over time, as you frequently save, resave, or delete your files, the segments can get fragmented – they get separated from each other and scattered across the hard disk. Thus, it takes longer to find the files. In this case, even the most high-end PC becomes sluggish and less responsive.
Disk defrag is a process that physically reorganizes the segments of the hard drive files and stores data into a small continuous region. It decreases fragment rate, make the files easier to find and finally, increase speed of your computer.
How often should you defrag your hard drives? Usually, it should be at least once a week, especially if you frequently use the PC. But you don’t need to defrag an SSD as SSD is able to read separated file segments as fast as reading those contiguous ones. Defragging an SSD causes unnecessary wear and tear. Meanwhile, its lifespan will be shortened.
When you search for “best disk defrag tool” on Google, you’re most like to receive results like “The Top 10 Disk Defraggler 2022” or “10 best programs you should trust for disk defrag” that definitely make you feel puzzled. So, to make everything easier, this time, I’ll recommend the best disk defrag program from what I’ve tested – AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional. With it, you can not only manually run a fast disk defrag in a few clicks, but also, enable schedule defrag to optimize your hard drives daily, weekly, monthly, during setup or logon and on some certain conditions. As this AOEMI product is a disk manager too, many operations including SSD 4K alignment and partition check are supported.
Download the demo of the best disk defrag program to have a try!
Step 1. Install and run AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional. When all your hard drives along with their partitions are detected, right-click the disk, and choose “Disk Defrag”.
Step 2. In the “Disk Defrag” window, you can tick the partitions you want to defrag and then, analyze and defrag them manually. Or you can click on the “Schedule” button to schedule defrag them.
Step 3. In the “Schedule Settings” window, select the drive you want to schedule defrag, set defrag frequency like daily, weekly, and monthly, and decide on what conditions to run the defrag.
Windows 11, 10, 8, 7 actually have their own built-in disk defrag tools. If you don’t want to apply a third-party utility to optimize your hard drives, you might as well try them first. Here, follow the step-by-step tutorial to get it done.
Windows has its own defrag app that’s usually installed to the boot drive. It helps defrag hard drives manually, and in the meantime, schedule defrag is also supported.
1. Click on the magnifier icon at the bottom of the desktop and type “disk defrag” in the search box.
2. Under “Best matches”, select “Defragment and Optimize Drives”.
3. Then, in the “Optimize Drives” window, check the current status of every drive. If it’s more than 10% fragmented, the drive needs to be fragmented. Click on “Optimize” to start the disk defrag. If you want to proceed with schedule defrag, hit the “Change settings” button.
4. Now, tick the option “Run a schedule” and set the frequency for the defrag and decide which drive to defrag after clicking on “Choose”. Afterwards, hit the “OK” button to save the settings.
CMD, or Command Prompt, is one of the command-line interface programs of Windows that’s able to perform different performances via command lines. You can input corresponding lines to execute a disk defrag process with this tool. However, as you should be very familiar with the meaning of every command line, this CMD is not recommended if you’re a computer novice. Then, how to run defrag with CMD?
1. Start Command Prompt on your Windows PC.
2. In the CMD window, type “defrag/?” and hit the “ENTER” to list all the options supported. To run a disk defrag process, input command – “defrag [drive letter] [parameter] [extra parameters]”.
3. If you still can’t get the gist of the screenshot, let make it clearer – if you just want to defrag the C drive, try using the command “defrag C:”; if you wish to analyze the C drive to check whether it need a defrag or not, type “defrag C:/A”; or if you plan on defragging all your drives immediately, type “defrag/C” and hit the “ENTER” key.
This defrag tool should be unfamiliar to most users as it’s a little bit tricky to launch a defrag with it. However, it’s easy-to-use and practical as what you need is only the notepad/notebook app.
1. Launch the notepad app.
2. Go to File Explorer and check the drive letters of all your partitions (mine are C, D, and E). Then, type the following words to the text editor:
@echo off
defrag.exe c: -f
defrag.exe d: -f
defrag.exe e: -f
3. Save the files as a Bat file. You need to name the file as “defrag.bat” and the file type should be “All Files”.
4. Run this file as administrator to start the hard drive defrag.
If you’re looking for the best disk defrag program, then, you’ve come to the right place. The article above gives the most powerful and multifunctional third-party defraggler – AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional – to help defrag or schedule defrag your disks in only a few clicks. If your computer is on Server, try the Server edition. Meanwhile, considering about users who don’t want a third-party tool, the 3 Windows built-in tools for disk defrag are also introduced.