AOMEI Partition Assistant
How to Run a Disk Defragment on Windows 11, 10, 8, 7?
Fragmentation will reduce the disk performance. Read to learn how to run a disk defragment on Windows 11, 10, 8, or 7. You can also learn more about hard drive defragment in this comprehensive tutorial.
By Hedy / Updated on March 14, 2025
Overview of disk defragment
What is fragmentation?
In the beginning, all programs are arranged in order on the sectors of the hard drive. But when you repeatedly delete and download, the problem occurs. The program installed later will first fill up the sector of the deleted program. If this sector is not enough, the rest part will look for another sector. In this way, a complete program is stored on discontinuous sectors, which results in fragmentation. Fragmentation makes it take longer for the hard drive to search data, thereby reducing the speed of the computer.
What is disk defragment?
Disk defragmentation organizes scattered data on a hard drive into a continuous order. This helps the computer find and read files faster, making it work more efficiently. It does not increase storage space but improves performance by reducing the time needed to access data.
Do I need to defrag Windows 7, 8, 10, and 11?
Yes, you do. Defragmentation is very necessary for HDD. But you should not defrag SSD, due to the different working principles of HDD and SSD, doing that will reduce its lifespan. Since the SSD can efficiently read the data in the cluster, it is not necessary. If you want to optimize the performance of SSD, you can try other methods.
How to run a Disk Defragment in the most effective way?
Disk Defragmenter, Optimize Drives, and Command Line are commonly used methods to optimize hard drives. However, some users report that sometimes the hard drive not showing up in Optimize Drives, or the CMD is too difficult to them.
But what if there's an easier and more efficient way? You can try the best alternative, AOMEI Partition Assistant, to run defrag Windows 11, 10, 8/8.1, and 7. It is a powerful third-party tool designed for disk defragmentation and optimization. Unlike traditional methods, it offers an intuitive graphical interface that displays your disk’s status clearly. With just a few clicks, you can:
✅ Manage disks and partitions flexibly with offering various powerful functions like delete, clone, split, or merge partitions.
✅ Optimize system performance effortlessly
AOMEI Partition AssistantThe Best Windows Disk Partition Manager and PC Optimizer
To Boost Performance Beyond Defragmentation
While defragmenting helps improve HDD performance, for a significant speed boost, consider upgrading to an SSD. AOMEI Partition Assistant offers:
🚀 Migrate OS to SSD – Speed up Windows without reinstalling by moving the OS to the fast SSD (or a new HDD).
🔄 Disk Clone – Transfer all data to the new disk safely and quickly without any data loss.
By the way, If you want to run Disk Defrag in Windows Server, you can try AOMEI Partition Assistant Server.
Step 1. On the main interface of AOMEI Partition Assistant, all your disks are listed. Find the disk you want to defragment (take Disk 0 as an example), right-click and select Disk Defrag.
Step 2. After that, all NTFS partitions on the disk will be listed. Because this function can only run on NTFS partitions currently. You can click Analyze to check partition.
Step 3. Wait a moment, Your partition status will be expressed in the form of scores. There are three results:
Normal: Score≥90. The current partition is in good condition, no need for defragmentation.
Suggest to organize: 60≤Score＜90. The current partition has some fragments, suggest to run the defragmentation.
Organize now: Score＜60. There are many fragments in the current partition, suggest to run the defragmentation immediately.
Step 4. You can click “Details” to view more information about the analysis results, or you can directly click “Defrag” to perform defragment.
Step 5. After the defragmentation is completed, the partition will be scored according to the defragmentation result.
Tips:
1. If you skip the Analyze at the beginning, Click Defrag directly. The program will still analyze the partition first.
2. You also click Schedule to enable scheduled defragmentation to automatically perform defragmentation on a regular basis.
Other methods to run disk defrag in Windows 7, 8, 10, 11
Windows 11, 10, 8, 7 has built-in disk defragment tools, including Disk Defragmenter and defrag Command Line. Now, you can learn how to find disk defrag utility and run disk defragment on Windows 11/10/8/7. You can choose one according to the actual situation.
Option 1. Run disk defrag via Disk Defragmenter
Step 1. Search for “Disk Defragmenter” in the search bar, and then open it(search Disk Defragment and Optimize Hard Drives in Windows 10).
Step 2. In this window, you can see all hard drives and current status on all computers.
Step 3. Select the drive you want to defragment, and then click “Defragment disk”.
PS.: Disk Defrag may take several minutes to several hours to complete, depending on the size and fragmentation of the hard disk.
Option 2. Run disk defrag with Command Line
Command Line is another way to perform disk defrag on Windows 7, 8, 10, 11. But Command Line requires you to have a certain understanding of the command prompt, it is not suitable for everyone.
Step 1. Press “Windows + R” to open the “Run” window.
Step 2. Enter “cmd” and click OK.
Step 3. In this window, you should type in “defrag C:” and press enter. C is the drive letter, if you plan to defrag other drives, you just need to modify the C to another drive letter.
Step 4. Wait a moment, you will see the final result of defragmentation.
Conclusion
From what has been discussed above, this article tells you what is fragmentation, what is disk defragmentation and how to run a disk defragment on Windows 11, 10, 8, 7 with some practical methods. I believe that after reading the article, you will be impressed with one of the methods. You can choose one according to your needs. For better performance enhancement, please choose AOMEI Partition Assistant to more effective options like we mentioned before.
AOMEI Partition AssistantThe Best Windows Disk Partition Manager and PC Optimizer
