For decades, desktop and laptop owners have been told to defragment their hard drives to get the best performance, especially on Windows-based PCs. Defragging reorganizes the drive so the operating ...

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. Defragmenting your computer helps ...

Defragging a hard drive was once so common it was almost a rite of passage for computer users. Many different disk utility and maintenance programs offered defragmentation routines as part of their ...

Stump the PC Club is a free tech-advice column written by members of the North Orange County Computer Club, which has been in existence since 1976. Visit the club’s site at noccc.org. And don’t forget ...

File fragmentation is one of the constants of Microsoft’s, and other, operating systems. On a brand-new drive, the first files written are all written to contiguous parts of the drive, making for the ...

Disk Cleanup is another utility that is accessible regardless of your Windows version. The easiest way to open it is to search for "Disk Cleanup" in the search bar and bring up the window.

We independently review everything we recommend. We may make money from the links on our site. Learn more› By Thorin Klosowski We’ve added backup instructions for Windows 11 and verified the ...