When you ask for advice to fix your slow running computer (with Windows), one of the answer you will get is “defragment your hard drive“. Defragmentation is not the only solution to speed up your computer, but it is one of the most useful fixes to reorganize your file structure and make accessing the files a tad bit faster. It may sound complicated, but with any of these tools, the process is simply a matter of point and click.
1. Windows Disc Defragmenter Tool
To defragment your hard drive in any Windows system without installing any other software,
Go to “Control Panel”. If you are on Windows 8, just go to your Metro start screen by hitting Windows key and type “Control panel” to open it. Next go to “Administrative Tools” and open “Defragment and Optimize drives”.
From the newly opened window, choose the required partition you want to defragment and hit the “optimize” button to defragment it. You can also schedule the defragmentation process for any partition which will be performed automatically by Windows.
2. Smart Defrag
Smart Defrag is a nifty disc defragmenter tool developed by IObit and personally, it’s my way to do things. Its simple, intuitive user interface and effectiveness can make it top the list. It streamlines your file system and also places the frequently used files and directories into the top priority lists. In another words, it customizes your computer according to your usage.
Smart Defrag facilitates its users with a real time automatic disc defragmentation ability and it does it so quietly in the background that you don’t even realize it is working. The latest feature added to Smart Defrag is “Boot Time Defrag”. Users can set it to defrag those fragmented files during system boot process which can be glitchy to defrag when Windows is running.
3. Defraggler
Defraggler is a fairly good disc defragmenter with some unique features to offer to its users, mothered by Piriform, mainly an utility tool developer enterprise for Windows operating systems.
Normally any disc defragmentation tool constraints its users from selective defragmentation of hard drive. Either you defrag the whole drive or you don’t do it at all. Defraggler enables you to defrag any particular file or lump of data. Precisely, defrag what you want.
One of Defraggler’s most advanced features is the ability to move larger files to the end of the drive. Strategically, operating systems can access files faster if small files are at the start of the drive. It can put the large and less used files like videos and archives at the end of the drive so that Windows finds the smaller (application) files first which will speed up effective disc reading time.
Another feature is that user can defrag free space on hard drives which generally contains residual bits and pieces of data. This process creates a continuous chunk of free space which results to a better performance of Windows when writing new data on partitions.
With these simple enough but effective features, Defraggler is worth downloading and installing for Windows users who crave for advanced options.
4. Auslogics Disc Defragmenter
A clutter free interface, easy to read dropdown menu of partitions with some unique features makes Auslogics Disc Defragmenter a noted mention within its genre. It comes with a one-click defragmentation process and shows the speed map of any drive.
This particular element (Speed Map) shows users the slow/fast access zones by a clean demarcation line and thankfully, an option to relocate files to these zones according to user’s priority.
In addition, a user can move system files or files which are accessed frequently to the “fast disk access zone”. This may stretch defragmentation time a bit long but surely speed up disc access time afterwards. If “volume shadow copy service” is enabled for any volume on your disc drive, it will defrag that too, which will minimise this growth of volume shadow copy caused by frequent re-allocation and deletion of files on disc drives.
5. Power Defragmenter
Power defragmenter is an utility which defragments files and folders from command prompt. It was specially designed for Sysinternal’s contig as a graphical user interface.
“Contig” is a single-file defragmenter which attempts to make files contiguous on disk. As Power Defragmenter is based on Contig, installation is not required. Just download it with Contig and keep both files in the same directory and it is ready to roar at your command.
User can choose to defrag targeted files, folders or a whole drive with a dedicated “Triple pass mode” for removable drives. On the whole, Power Defragmenter can be a dead simple tool for commoners who don’t seek much super speciality from their defragmenting tool or graphical gimmick.
If there’s a tool that you think does a better job, feel free to share with us.
Soumen is the founder/author for Ampercent, a tech blog that writes on computer tricks, free online tools & software guides.
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