File Fragmentation - Why It Is a Problem and How to Repair It - By: Allin Taylor

If your pc has been functioning slow as of late there are quite a few reasons that could be the reason for the trouble. One probable contender for being the cause of your system slowness is file fragmentation. File fragmentation can crop up on any system, it is not an indication of failing hardware or bad programming or any human errors. This file fragmentation sets in as a product of simple physics. It is something that should be looked at once in a while as it takes a while to accumulate, so once every six months or so should be acceptable for defragmenting your hard drive. In this article I am going to explain what exactly file fragmentation is, why it happens, and what you can do to correct it.

What is file fragmentation? The response to that query requires a good deal of an explanation. There is not a simple answer. For those of you who recollect vinyl albums, they are great physical depictions of the logical arrangement of a hard drive. The disc of the hard drive is circular and it has a sequence of concentric rings. Each of those circles is separated into segments and each of those segments can hold a specific amount of information. When your computer stores data on your hard drive the information cannot overlap sectors. So that when information is larger than what can fit in one segment the information is separated into two separate pieces. Ideally those two separate pieces would then be stored into adjacent segments of the hard disk. In that case the information would still not be fragmented. Often however there are not enough adjacent segments on the hard drive to save a full set of data and so one piece of the information has to be kept in an entirely separate area of the hard drive. Now you have fragmented data. It's not a serious concern but it does contribute to the amount of time required to get the file next time you want use it.

The reasons why information cannot always be saved in adjacent segments of the hard drive are pretty basic and easy to understand. The adjacent sectors already contain data from other programs or files. The more programs you have installed and the number of times that you install and uninstall different programs adds to the amount of fragmentation on your hard disk. The solution is rather simple though. We just need to use a disk defragmentation utility.

The utility that I highly recommend using for defragmenting a Windows based system is smart defrag. Do a Google search for Smart defrag, download it, and install it. This tool is extremely simple and easy to run but it will require quite a bit of time so be prepared to start the program and then walk away for an hour or two while it does its work.

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