Over time, computer hard drives have a tendency to accumulate clutter. The defragment process was created to help clean up this disorder and keep related data in the same region of the disk drive. Running the defragment maintenance utility in Windows 10 can improve the speed of your hard drive and extend its life.
Step 1:
Make sure you are signed into your PC with an administrator account. Only administrative users have the ability to run the defragment tool.
Step 2:
Open the Start menu by clicking on the Windows icon in the lower-left corner of the screen.
Step 3:
Go to the list of all programs and expand the “Windows Administrative Tools” folder.
Step 4:
Click on the “Defragment and Optimize Drives” button. This will launch the maintenance utility window, which will display a list of all internal and external disk drives associated with your computer. If a drive is missing from the list, make sure it is powered on and connected to the computer with a working cable.
Step 5:
Highlight the disk drive that you want to defragment. The local drive where Windows 10 is installed, which is normally the C drive, should be defragmented on a monthly basis.
Step 6:
Click on the “Optimize” button to begin the defragment process. Keep in mind that depending on the size of the drive and amount of data on it, this process may last several hours. When finished, the utility will report the current status and health of the selected drive.
The Defragment and Optimize Drives tool also allows administrator users to schedule the defragment process to happen on a regular basis. This will allow the process to run on a weekly or monthly basis, typically when all users are logged out of the computer. For more information, consult the Windows support article on disk defragment.
