Does anyone know anything about defragmenting your computer? I hear it's supposed to make your computer run faster, so I'm thinking of defraging it but I'm not sure how to go about it, so here are my questions:

1. Where in your PC do you go to defrag it?

2. Should I back up all my files onto a hard drive before I do it? What's the risk if I don't?

3. How long does it take to defrag?

4. Is defragmenting really effective or does only make a slight difference to your computer's performance (i.e. is it worth the hastle)?

Thanks for any info!

Come on fam, I sure a few of you mut know about defraggin! Pleeaaassee

thanks man, you're the don!

First of, a little time with your google friend would have informed you about this fatser then me or A.G.C. typing it down for you (sorry if that sounded harsh).

Now let me first expain to you and anyone else reading this what it is and why it happens.

When you format a harddrive you are in essence creating tiny "pockets" of certain bit lenghts. How bicg that "pocket" of data is depends on the method of formating used.

Now when you save a file on your hardrive it will be divided to smaller pieces and stored in the "pockets" near each other. Now let's say that you are saving 4 files on a brand new harddrive, they are named A, B, C and D. the data on the hardddrive would would look a little like this:

AAAAAABBBBBBCCCCCCDDDDDD

every piece of the file is next to each other, which means that the reader head of the harddrive does not need to move alot to read the whole file. So what is fragmentation then? Well what happens when you throw away file B?

AAAAAA CCCCCCDDDDDD

That makes sense right? But then you want to save another file nemd E that is larger then the old B file. This is what happens on your harddrive.

AAAAAAEEEEEECCCCCCDDDDDDEEEEE

Now the the reader head of the drive must jump over sectors to read all parts of the file E. A year goes by and yur harddrive will start to look like this:

AAGHEEDWWQRTTTSADDLOOOOOWASSNXXXXGD

Now your reader head is jumping all over the place to find all the parts of a file and therefore it is going to take it longer to do so.
What defragmenting does is move all those tiny file parts so they are as close to together as possible, thus making fiel access faster.

Now for your questions.

1. Where in your PC do you go to defrag it?
Odd phrasing, your harddrive ofcourse :p I imagine you are asking what software to use. While windows has it's own defrag toll like mentioned above. it's not all that great and I would opt for a third party alternative. There are alot of different ones to try, personally I use O&O Defrag which lets me do the maintanence in the background without stealing system resources and letting me to do some work while it's douing it's magic.

2. Should I back up all my files onto a hard drive before I do it? What's the risk if I don't?
In general defragging your harddrive should not cause any problems wtih your files. However you should always keep backups of your important files anyway. (not just for defraggin, bad things happen when you least expect them)

3. How long does it take to defrag?
Depends entirely on the fragmentation on your harddrive, it's size, the program you use, the system resource usage and your hardware setup.
Some of the poorer defrag utilities (read MS) will force you away from your computer while doing the job, while others work in the background and only use free system resources for the job. There are also several different methods of defraggin a drive which all will ofcourse have an impact on the speed of the operation. In short, it's impossible to tell you how long it will take.

4. Is defragmenting really effective or does only make a slight difference to your computer's performance (i.e. is it worth the hastle)?
Yes and no, depends on your habits. How bad is the fragmentation on your HD, are we talking about read only files or the drive you ru your applications from? If you get into a habit of running regular defrags then the performace gain won't be super noticeable after each one. If it's your first time then you might notice a bigger increase in speed. You should really get in to a habit of doing it every now and then, like you do a full system scan for viruses and crap ware (if not, I would recommend you opick up that habit aswell)

How much benefit you will have from it is also very hard to say. It depends on what your main system slow down reason is. If it's fragmentation then yes, if it's too many useless bloated programs, shady adware applications, stupid useless services ruuning or 10000 fonts installed, then no not much.

Thanks a lot Sab, that was really informative. I appreciate you taking the time to give me such a detailed answer!

I didn't really know how to phrase question 1, lol! What I meant was do I have to click Start>Run>etc..., or what else? Anyways, AGC covered that already, so no worries. Thank you both

Everything has been said already actually, but if I can contribute my 2 cents.. I'd also go for a third party defragger. They are usually way better than the default Windows defragger.

I'd also go for a third party defragger. They are usually way better than the default Windows defragger.

Thanks man. Where can I get a 3rd party defragger. And which one would be a good pick?

I defragged my pc once (I have a pretty good rig, so I dont do it often, also because I barely install or download anything), I used Defraggler.
http://www.piriform.com/defraggler/download
Thats the link ^. While ur at it, you could also download CCleaner, which deletes lots of small files you dont need, which you should run first, then the defrag program ofc.
http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner

Good luck