How To Defragment your Hard Drive

If your computer is running slowly, you can improve the performance by defragmenting the hard drive on any Windows based operating system.

Step-by-step guide

Windows 7

1. Go to Start, then All Programs, then Accessories, then System Tools and click on Disk Defragmenter
2. Select the hard drive, then click Defragment Disk.
3. Also, you can set a schedule so the defragmentation will run automatically.

Windows 8

1. Press Windows + S keys to open the Search menu
   
2. Search for Defragment and then click on this item - Defragment and optimize your hard drives.
3. Choose drive letter, then click Optimize. You should repeat the process for each hard drive.
   

Windows 10

1. Open Disk Defragmenter by clicking the Start button . In the search box, type Disk Defragmenter, and then, in the list of results, click Disk Defragmenter.
2. Under Current status, select the disk you want to defragment.
3. To determine if the disk needs to be defragmented or not, click Analyze disk.  If you're prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.

4. Once Windows is finished analyzing the disk, you can check the percentage of fragmentation on the disk in the Last Runcolumn. If the number is above 10%, you should defragment the disk.

5. Click Defragment disk.  If you're prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.