Do you still need a disk defragmenter for Windows PCs in 2018?

Windows users are often told to defragment the drive to speed up their PC. That was once the case, but is it still the case today? Do you still need to defragment the hard drive? Is your PC running faster?

Is defrag dead?

The answer to the question in the title depends on the type of drive in your computer. Solid State Disks (SSDs) are becoming increasingly popular and do not need to be defragmented.

In fact, defragmentation is even bad for them. The reason for this is that they are only good for a certain number of writes. A defragmenter will produce many writes when running, and the drive will reach its end of life sooner.

An SSD has no physically moving parts and therefore retrieving data from widely separated areas of storage is just as fast as retrieving data from neighboring parts. Consequently, defragmenting an SSD has no benefit.

Do not do it!

Any decent defragmenter should detect the presence of an SSD and still not defragment it.

Why you should defrag your hard drive

Older-style mechanical hard drives are cheaper than SSDs and have a lot of storage capacity for the price, so they're built into many PCs to keep costs down. Chances are your PC has a mechanical hard drive.

A file can be fragmented and split into multiple parts. These can be stored in widely separated areas of the disk. When a fragmented file is accessed, the disk must physically move the read/write head to retrieve each piece, and this takes longer than if the file were stored in one piece.

Anyone with a mechanical drive should defragment the hard drive. Modern drives are much faster than they were 10 or 15 years ago, so the benefits aren't as great as they used to be, but there are still noticeable speed improvements.

Defragmentation is automatic, so forget it

Several versions of Windows have a built-in disk defragmenter that runs in the background and quietly defrags the disk without you knowing or having to do anything.

Disk defragmentation is automatic and built into Windows. You don't have to run a disk defragmenter manually, and you don't have to stop using the PC while the disk defragmenter does its work.

You won't notice it as it runs when the PC is idle.

Disk defragmentation runs on a schedule and is typically triggered once a week. You can check the schedule by opening the program.

It's on the beginning Expand menu and in Windows 10 Windows administration tools and then click Defragment and optimize drives. On Windows 7 go to Start, All Programs, Access Programs, System Tools, Disk Defragmenter.

At the bottom of the window in the Planned Optimization section it should say it's on and that drives are auto-optimized. The Frequency is set to Weekly, but if you want to defragment more frequently, click the Change button and select Daily from the list.

You can also select a disk and click Optimize to start defragmenting it immediately.

Alternative disk defragmenters

Windows disk defragmentation is not the best possible and there are alternative defragmentation programs that can improve it.

The benefits are much smaller than they used to be before Windows started automatic disk defragmentation, but if you want to squeeze every last drop of performance out of a drive, it's worth using.

IObit Smart Defrag

Smart Defrag is a free app and an excellent hard drive defragmenter. You can disable the Windows built-in tool and use this one instead.

The hard drive can be analyzed to see the level of fragmentation and there is a choice of defragmentation methods - quick defragmentation, defragmentation and optimization, large file defragmentation, free space defragmentation and the best but slowest method, defragment and prioritize files.

Some files are always in use when Windows is running, but there is a boot defragmentation option that will run the app the next time the PC is started. It defragments these files before Windows runs. It adds a minute or two to startup time, but you don't have to run it very often.

Defragmentation is automatic in the paid Pro version, but you can schedule defragmentations in the free version, which is almost as good. This application is recommended.

Piriform Defraggler

Piriform is best known for the Ccleaner cleaner, but the company also has a great disk defragmenter called Defraggler. It is available in free and paid pro versions.

A drive can be analyzed to see the level of defragmentation and there is a nice display showing a fragmentation map, a pie chart showing used and free space, and a short text report showing fragment count, fragmentation percentage, etc.

There are quick and normal defrag options. However, the File List tab in the lower half of the screen lists fragmented files and they can be sorted by fragment, size, or last used date. You can then select files to be defragmented.

This is great for defragmenting your most used or most fragmented files. By selecting only the files that need defragmenting the most, the task can be reduced to a few minutes. This app is recommended and the free version is pretty good.

Ultra Defrag

Ultra Defra is a free, open-source disk defragmenter worth considering. The interface doesn't look as attractive as Smart Defrag or Defraggler, but the app can analyze a hard drive and display a defragmentation map.

You can choose Defrag, Quick Optimization, Full Optimization, or Optimize MFT (Master File Table, an important part of the filing system). The hard drive can also be defragmented at boot time before Windows starts, so files that are normally in use can be defragmented.

When defragmenting, files can be sorted by various attributes, such as size, last access time, creation date, and so on. This is interesting and there might be speed advantages to placing recently accessed files first.

O&O Defrag 20

O&O Defrag is a commercial application and you get more features for your money. For example, the defragger can place files in zones so that frequently accessed files are placed first, where they are quickly accessible, and infrequently used files are placed furthest away.

It has automatic background defragmentation and multiple drives can be defragmented at the same time. This is useful when you have external hard drives that need to be optimized.

The app has a built-in disk cleaner so it can automatically remove junk files before defragmentation. It also detects SSDs and optimizes them (it doesn't defragment them, it uses a special command for SSDs to tune them). It can wipe free space on a hard drive for security purpose, so no one can recover deleted files.

O&O Defrag costs £19.99 UK but discounts are sometimes available and there is a free trial.

Need to defragment?

So what is the answer to the question asked at the beginning? If you have a solid state drive, you definitely don't need to defragment it.

If you have a mechanical hard drive, you don't need to defragment it because Windows does it automatically. However, you may be able to get a little more performance out of the drive by using an alternative defragmentation tool.

By: Do you still need a disk defragmenter for Windows PCs in 2018?