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• How To Defragment My Hard Drive Windows 8
• Defrag Hard Drive On Mac
• Defrag Hard Drive Windows 8.1
• How To Defragment Windows 8.1
• How To Defragment Your Hard Drive Windows 8

You are now faced with the Windows 8 file explorer in a desktop environment. You want to right click on your primary Hard Drive that the Operating System is running off, which will most likely be the (C:) Drive. Once you have right clicked on the (C:) Drive scroll down to the 'Properties' option at the bottom of the drop down menu and Click on it. The good old Disk Defragmenter tool that went through a series of changes in Windows 7 has been changed again in Windows 8.1 and Windows 10. It has a new name – Optimize Drives – and some new inner workings that make it able to deal with both hard disks and solid state drives. Underneath the Administrative Tools section of the menu, click on 'Defragment and optimize your drives.' In the window that opens, click on the disk drive you want to defragment. Press the Windows + S buttons to open Search. 2 In the Search field, type defragment, and then press Enter.

Windows 8 automatically defragments your hard drives either traditional HDDs or SSDs. As I peviously said, it is not advisable to enable automatic defragmentation for SSDs. To change the defragmentation options follow these steps: 1. On Start screen, search for “defragment”. A “Defragment Your Hard Drive” link appears.

• Most contemporary Windows operating systems will defrag your computer automatically.
• You can defrag your computer manually if you have Windows 7, 8, 10, or Vista.
• Visit Business Insider's Tech Reference library for more stories.

Defragmenting your computer helps organize the data in your hard drive and can improve its performance tremendously, especially in terms of speed. If your computer is running slower than usual, it might be due for a defrag.

How to defrag your computer automatically

If your computer's operating system is Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10, or Windows Vista, it should have an automatic defragmentation feature that runs on its own periodically. This feature is automatically enabled, so you don't actually need to do anything extra to defrag your computer. But if you want to control when your computer runs its defragmentation processes, you can do that to an extent.

1. Press the Windows key or click the Start button on your desktop and locate the Control Panel. Once you've done so, click on the Control Panel to open it.

3. Underneath the Administrative Tools section of the menu, click on 'Defragment and optimize your drives.'

4. A window will open, listing your computer's various disk drives. Toward the bottom of the window, click on 'Change settings.'

5. A smaller window will appear. In this window, select the settings that best apply to how frequently you want your computer to defragment. When you're finished, click 'OK.'

How to defrag your computer manually

Like the previous defrag method, if your computer's operating system is Windows 7, 8, 10, or Vista, you can run its disk defragmentation manually when you think your computer is in need of one.

1. Open the Control Panel.

2. Click on 'System and Security.'

3. Underneath the Administrative Tools section of the menu, click on 'Defragment and optimize your drives.'

4. In the window that opens, click on the disk drive you want to defragment.

5. Click 'Optimize' to defragment the disk drive.

Related coverage from Tech Reference:

Summary :

Many people say you should not defrag SSDs. Is this reasonable? If you can't defrag SSDs, what can you do to optimize them? This article will give you answers and corresponding detailed explanations. You can use MiniTool Partition Wizard to manage your SSDs.

Should I Defrag SSD?

Over the last few years, SSDs have become the standard storage device for computer enthusiasts and gamers. Many of you may have upgraded your computer to SSD or are planning to do that. However, after learning more about SSDs, you may have questions like the following one.

I have just learned that one should 'Never defragment your SSD'. But I have no idea if that is true. --- superuser.com

Many of you may have heard before that you should never defragment your SSD because the conventional wisdom says defragging an SSD would reduce its life. This statement is correct.

Generally speaking, disk defragmentation is only suitable for HDDs. As many of us know, after the hard disk is used for a period of time, the file defragments are scattered to the discontinuous physical locations of the entire disk due to repeated writing and deleting of files, so that the files cannot exist in consecutive sectors. These scattered sectors are called fragments.

HDDs operate using a physical spinning platter and drive 'heads'. When HHDs read or write data, the drive 'heads' should be positioned in right locations. However, too many fragments will cause the drive heads to look back and forth while reading the file, causing system performance degradation and severely shortening the life of the HHDs.

It is necessary to defrag computer since it can improve computer performance largely. This post shows how to defrag Windows 7 step by step.

However, SSD defrag is not appropriate because the reading and writing mode of SSDs is different from that of HHDs.

The SSD controller writes data in a scattershot-fashion to multiple NAND chips and locations, using algorithms that only the controller understands. Although the data is spread all over the drive by the controller, SSDs can still read and write data quickly because SSDs have no moving parts and SSDs don't need seek time or rotational latency.

In addition, NAND SSDs have limitation on write cycles, so defragging can reduce the SSD’s lifespan because the defragging process will produce unnecessary writes for SSDs.

This post shows you how to check your SSD's lifespan and gives you advice on increasing SSD life and dealing with SSD failure.

On the other hand, the saying that you should never defragment your SSD may be just 'partially' right. I use the word 'partially' because some of you may not know the differences between the disk defragmenter and the drive optimizer.

Disk Defragmenter and Drive Optimizer

In operating system versions before Windows 8, there is a built-in disk defragmentation tool called Disk Defragmenter. It looks like the following picture.

This tool can only treat your hard drives as HHDs and defrag them in the same way. Thus, defragging your SSDs will reduce their life. So, if you are running operating systems before Windows 8, you should not defrag SSDs.

However, with the popularity of SSDs, Microsoft has replaced Disk Defragmenter with Optimize Drives from Windows 8. It looks like the following picture.

Although the Disk Defragmenter and Optimize Drives have the same icon, they are slightly different in features. The biggest difference is that Optimize Drives can distinguish SSDs from hard drives.

How To Defragment My Hard Drive Windows 8

When you optimize an HHD, this tool will defrag it. However, when you optimize an SSD, this tool will not defrag it, but send TRIM command to the SSD master controller notifying which blocks are no longer considered for use and can be internally erased. So, if you are running Windows 8 or Windows 10, you can optimize your SSD with no worry.

How to run Optimize Drives? Here is the tutorial.

Defrag Hard Drive On Mac

Step 1: Enter 'optimize' in the Windows search box.

Step 2: Click the Defragment and Optimize Drives icon to run it.

Step 3: Choose a disk and click the Optimize button.

Should you defrag SSDs? Absolutely not! You should optimize it not defrag it.

Want to get best performance from SSD (solid state drive) in Windows 10/8.1/8/7? You can find step-by-step tutorials from this post.

Scanning SSD for Bad Blocks

Apart from optimizing SSDs, you should also pay attention to SSD bad blocks. Just like HHDs have bad sectors, SSDs also have bad blocks. Too many bad blocks can cause SSD failure. Hence, you should use a reliable third-party software to monitor your SSD.

As for the SSD monitoring software, MiniTool Partition Wizard is recommended. Its Disk Surface Test feature not only can tell you how many bad sectors are on HHDs, but it also can show you how many bad blocks are on SSDs.

Here is the tutorial.

Step 1: Download MiniTool Partition Wizard and launch it to get to its main interface. Then, right-click on the SSD disk and choose Surface Test.

Step 2: Click the Start Now button on the new window to scan your SSD.

Defrag Hard Drive Windows 8.1

Further Reading:

Bad blocks can be classified into three types: factory bad blocks, bad blocks caused by overuse, and logical bad blocks.

The first two kinds of bad blocks are physical ones, so they can be repaired. You can attempt to fix the logical bad blocks through error checking, full formatting, etc.

Have you ever troubled for by disk error or a partition error? This post will show you how to check hard drive for error and fix them.

How To Defragment Windows 8.1

Bottom Line

Does this article answer your questions about SSD defragging? Do you have any other opinions about Windows Disk Defragmenter and Windows Drive Optimizer? Please leave a comment below.

How To Defragment Your Hard Drive Windows 8

Of course, if you have problems in optimizing your SSD or scanning for bad blocks, please also leave a comment below or email us at [email protected]. We will reply to you as soon as possible.